Of course, the first thing we have to do is listen to some samples. While these play, keep in mind how easy it is to fake videos such as these today. Sounds can be taken from the Internet from any source, and it requires no more than journeyman computer skills to add a sound to a video and apply any manner of reverb or background noise to it. But regardless of their origin, these are the types of sounds that characterize the Sky Trumpets phenomenon; so if there is something to explain, this is what they sound like.

So far, all of these Sky Trumpet recordings were posted to the Internet after 2011. Here is what amateur researchers have determined is the earliest of these videos and certainly the most popular with over 4 million views, and it was uploaded to YouTube in August of 2011, from Kiev in Ukraine, by someone calling herself “Russian Kristina”:

Since this video went live, there have been any number of copycat hoax videos posted using the exact same audio file; including one that got a bit of press, by a girl who did the whole thing in five minutes to show her friends how easy it was to make a hoax Sky Trumpets video.

But hoaxes aside, it’s a virtual certainty that at least some of these videos are genuine, and represent real sounds heard by real people who recorded them and posted them online in good faith. Given that, is it then proven that Sky Trumpets are a real — and unknown to science — phenomenon?

If you’re a follower of my blog, you know by now that i’m a big fan of Vsauce (YouTube) because he makes some awesome, brain-twisting videos. Well, he’s back to melt your brain with another great video. Enjoy 🙂

There are all these weird noises too! What does it all mean? The Apocalypse? Well if you buy into tabloids, and religious and conspiracy sites hype (specifically from the WND site), it sounds like the End. But we doubt it. While it may sound sciencey on the surface, such claims are a bunch of pseudoscientific nonsense. So you can stop worrying, really. OK, here’s the reasoning.

In early September, we told you about reverend John Hagee who was promoting his new book on the end times culminating with the “Blood Moon” concocted scare to happen on September 27-28. As we noted then,

Prophecy isn’t real.

Religion is not science.

Hagee is selling a book, encouraging fear to bring people to his brand of religion.

There is no natural reason why the end of the world has anything to do with this date.

There have been 62 tetrads since the first century, these are natural cycles, nothing special.

A story about the END OF THE WORLD!!! is guaranteed click-bait. Jewish mystics and Christian End Times evangelists promoting this view cite various recent catastrophes (drought, fires, volcanoes and earthquakes), increased murder rates [only in some cities], gay marriage legalization, signs in the sky, and Pope Francis’ visit to the US now as signals of the return of Jesus. Bookies are taking bets; I can’t quite figure how those will pay out.

Most Conspiracy Theories are stupid. By the power of the internet they spread like wildfire and often poison discussions. But there is hope – we developed a way to debunk conspiracies in just a few seconds…

Biblical prophecy watchers, apocalypse predictors, rapture preachers, and doomsday preppers are buzzing about an upcoming day that might finally usher in the End of the World As We Know It: September 23, 2015. This is supposedly the day that a confluence of events, both political and scientific, is going to herald the destruction of humanity.

Oh man, not broken down cars!

It’s clear that in prophecy circles, this is a big deal. A search for “September 23 2015 apocalypse” brings up 11 million hits. References to the “events of September, 2015” are all over major conspiracy websites, talking about everything from rapture to asteroids to aliens to Biblical blood moons. YouTube is brimming with videos showing “the signs” of what’s about to happen. Even Isaac Newton is said to have prophesied the end of the world for this date.

So what’s going to happen that day? What are the sources of these prophecies? And most importantly, should you be worried?

Let’s start with what’s being predicted for September 23, 2015 – and for September 2015 in general. According to various conspiracy, prophecy, and prepping websites, the following things will happen on the date itself:

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the White House. Of note is that Francis is the 266th Pope, September 23 is the 266th day of the year, and the average length of human gestation is 266 days.

The Autumnal Equinox.

The First day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, also known as “the Feast of the Sacrifice.”

A range of dates that Comet 67P is scheduled to make an extremely close passage of Earth, September 15-28.

The September restart of the CERN Large Hadron Collider will open a portal to another dimension.

The end of Jade Helm 15 on September 15.

The September 25th launch of a new UN initiative, Agenda 2030, which signals the end stage of Agenda 21 implementation.

The date of the last of the “Four Blood Moons” heralding the End Times, on September 28.

The approximate date of predicted economic collapse.

The end of a Shemitah year in the Jewish Calendar, the last year of the seven year agricultural cycle, that traditionally brings with it great tribulation.

All of these events have been prophesied to form a combination that will bring on the End Times. What are the sources of these predictions?

Damn you, Ned Flanders! Damn you!

The obvious confluence of the three major world religions on September 23.

Biblical prophecy, specifically the “Four Blood Moons” prophecy.

The End Times prophecy of Sir Isaac Newton.

A dire warning from French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who claimed on May 13, 2014 that we have “500 days to avoid climate chaos.” 500 days after May 13, 2014 is September 24, 2015.

Prophetic dreams and visions by people attuned to such things.

Predictive programming in Hollywood entertainment – specifically, many uses of the numbers “9” and “23” in films and TV.

If all of this is correct, September 2015 is going to be a spectacularly bad month for humanity, with climactic, scientific, economic, and godly chaos brought down upon us. So stock up on beans, guns, and guns that shoot beans, because we’re in for it.

Except skeptics don’t think like this. We don’t see omens and prophecy and rumor, grab our bug-out bags and head for the bunker. We grab our facts and head for the…facts bunker.

Conspiracy theory websites and blogs have intensified the mass hysteria-inducing message that global civilization will witness a major climate catastrophe September 22-28 — due to an asteroid impact event — heralding the end of the world.While conspiracy theorists are unanimous that a major climate disaster will occur in September, 2015, there are as many versions of the details of the anticipated global cataclysm as there are YouTube doomsday prophets announcing the bad news.

But the various versions of the end-of-the-world predictions by biblical end-time theorists appear to be converging on the idea that the impending climate catastrophe will not be the end-of-the-world literally, but a major catastrophe that will trigger the Rapture and the commencement of the prophetic 7-year Tribulation. The Tribulation will witness the emergence of the Illuminati-sponsored New World Order (NWO), the revelation of the Beast, and Pope Francis assuming the role of the “False Prophet” mentioned in The Book of Revelation.

Obama, according to conspiracy theorists, will play a relatively modest role in the Tribulation period as the predecessor of the Beast.

Obama With Devil Horns: Obama, According To Conspiracy Theorists, Is Only Predecessor Of The Beast

The exact date for the asteroid impact is often stated as September 24. The impact will be a signal to the ever-conspiring Illuminati to implement their socialist world government agenda. The upcoming Jade Helm military exercises are part of Illuminati preparation for the New World Order.

Who is old enough to remember Y2K? I remember it well (translation: i’m old).

Y2K is an acronym for “Year 2000,” or, as it was also known – “The Year 2000 problem, the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, the Y2K bug, or simply Y2K.” (source) It was the moment when the clocks struck 12:00 AM on Janury 1, 2000 and how it might affect every aspect of our lives. Why?

The year 2000 was a problem for many computers because many computer programs stored years using only the last two digits of the year; for example, 1980 was stored as “80”, the year 1999 was stored as “99” and the year 2000 would be stored as “00”.

Do you see the problem? Not only did such systems view the year 2000 as “00”, but they also viewed the year 1900 as “00”. Imagine what would happen to half your programs if your computer suddenly thought the current year (2013) was actually the year 1913. Your calendar program, your watch, your smart phone and many other programs we rely on would suddenly be all wacked out. Imagine what would happen to the banking system if this glitch occurred. Would you be able to access your money? Would all your checks suddenly bounce? (On the other hand, maybe the banks would suddenly give us 100 years of accrued interest. But i digress …)

Now imagine if such a glitch were to occur in bigger systems like nuclear electric plants and nuclear weapons? What might go wrong? This is what had a lot of people in a near state of panic.

Would telephone systems shutdown? Would the electric grid turn off across the country – plunging all of us into darkness for an indeterminant amount of time? Would trains run on schedule? Would the air traffic control system lose control? Would our nuclear arsenal behave in some unpredicted manner and cause WWIII? Would the nuclear arsenal in some other country malfunction and bomb us?

It seemed nobody knew for sure what would – or would not – happen. People were concerned and scared.

Enter my favorite moron – Alex Jones.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, the night the clocks were due to change over to the year 2000, The Alex Jones show engaged in some of the most negligent, egregious and irresponsible scare mongering ever. I don’t know of a worse case than this.

In the 3 hours Jones was on the air, he made every conceivable claim of catastrophe imaginable. He took everything people were fearing about Y2K and he claimed those fears were materializing. Everything from cash machines failing, nuclear power plants shutting down, concentration camps (with shackles) being readied, empty grocery store shelves, gas stations out of gas, Martial Law declared, the military serving search warrants in 77 Texas counties – to an actual nuclear missile attack!!!!!!!!

And did any of this actually occur? No. None of it. People were so frightened they reportedly headed for the hills (literally) and got physically sick.

Bill Cooper’s original broadcast was 3 hours long. In the Alex Jones recording i present below, except for the opening 30 seconds, i have edited out all of Bill Cooper’s narratives so you can hear Alex Jones uninterrupted in all his despicable glory.

As i was going through the audio, i noticed breaks in the Alex Jones audio that i assume were done by Bill Cooper’s editing team in preparation for broadcast. Where ever i believed there was an edit i added a half-second “beep” sound. This is to help avoid confusion as the conversation would sometimes abruptly change topics. So listen for the beeps (you can’t miss them).

Below the audio you will find a complete transcript of notes i made of what to expect in the audio. This will help you follow along. Where ever you see the word “Regurgitation,” that is my own shorthand to indicate it is a previously mentioned point being repeated by Jones – a tactic he uses to give the impression he has a pile of information. Any words [inside brackets] are commentaries i made for myself.

Believe me, this is an audio clip Alex Jones wishes would go away.

Enjoy!

🙂

Mason I. Bilderberg.

P.S. If anybody knows where i can find a copy of the full 3 hour Alex Jones Show from 12/31/1999 please let me know.

1:39 Pennsylvania nuclear plant (Limerick Generating Station) has been shut down [implied because of Y2K-related problems. Not true. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) findings are contained in the image, below]

1:49 The shelves (In TX) are empty of water and gas stations are running out of fuel

3:12 The government in Washington D.C. has set up a $50M command bunker that is hooked into FEMA and they can take over all the shortwave (radio), AM/FM radio stations and all television and other broadcast stations

3:34 The police and military [presumably nationwide] are on high alert

3:41 The military are highly visible [presumably in the streets]

3:45 Trains of military equipment moving into Austin, TX

3:53 The airport (Robert Mueller Airport) will be used as a massive holding facility [ala concentration camps]

6:00 They (Russia) have deployed their missiles and submarines against us (America).

6:09 Vladimir Putin, who just took over as Russian President, has “taken the codes off” Russia’s nuclear arsenal. (The Russian nuclear arsenal no longer requires a secret code to initiate a nuclear missile attack on America.)

6:25 Discussing America being hit with a nuclear first-strike and the ensuing annihilation.

7:27 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania Electric Company (PECO), Limerick Generating Station (here and here) was shutdown [presumably because of Y2K-related problems. Not true. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) findings are contained in the image, below].

7:38 Doesn’t challenge a caller paraphrasing (Colonel) Bo Gritz who said, that Russia said, if their (Russia) power goes out they will blame us and they (Russia) would set off their nuclear arsenal.

8:01 The Russians are threatening to nuke us every, single week.

8:25 Currencies around the world are plunging

8:39 Gas stations in America are out of gas

8:58 American’s are standing up as Russia threatens to attack us with nuclear weapons

9:02 Nuclear power plants are being shutdown

9:07 The military is “running around” with the police and the FBI saying terrorism is imminent [the takeover is beginning]

9:25 “They” have activated a powerful, cold war, radar system in the north pole region [presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack] that is affecting shortwave (radio)

9:46 Military traffic is EVERYWHERE

9:52 Regurgitation: Super power, cold war radar systems (presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack) and nuclear systems are up.

10:07 Fresno (California?) is blacked out, he (Jones) is off the internet

10:25 [Scare tactic, Survivalist Commercial]

11:03 “America is under siege right now.”

11:14 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

11:33 Egypt is having a run on the banks

11:45 Regurgitation: The power in Fresno (California?) is down, he is off the internet

11:50 Regurgitation: Cash machines and ATMs in Europe are having problems

12:03 Martial Law signs are posted on highway 65 in Arkansas by the Arkansas Transportation Department

21:18 There are “shackles on the ground, concreted into the ground” at Robert Mueller Airport – like a slave galley.

21:42 New Zealand is having power outages

21:57 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

22:33 Regurgitation: Vladimir Putin threatens to nuke us

22:50 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

22:55 The power is off in 8 different areas across the country

22:58 A lot of cable systems aren’t working

23:01 Satellites are down

23:09 “Minor fault (???) struck two nuclear power plants in Japan just seconds after the clock ticked into 2000 …”

23:25 Anybody near a nuclear power plant should pack up and go someplace else.

23:37 The store shelves are bare in Austin, TX.

23:43 Regurgitation: Gas is running out.

23:44 They’re announcing on the news that, “if you’re bad they’re going to put you in a … they’re going to bolt you to a pipe coming out of the ground at the airport (Robert Mueller Airport) in some cold hangar.”

24:04 “The military is serving search warrants now in 77 Texas counties.”

24:08 Regurgitation: “We got nuclear power plants shutting down.”

24:20 Regurgitation: The Russians are threatening to nuke us RIGHT NOW.

28:36 Regurgitation: It’s on ABC news that 5 nuclear missiles have been launched.

28:57 The night before (12/30/99), anything and everything on the flight line at Selfridge Air National Guard Base was put into the air and was constantly in the air. [i.e. The U.S. is preparing for a nuclear attack]

29:11 Regurgitation: Super power, cold war radar systems [presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack] are turned on.

29:21 The Russians are not the only ones we need to be concerned about … we should worry about the Chinese too.

20:24 We also need to be worried about Germany.

29:58 Regurgitation: It’s on ABC news that 5 nuclear missiles have been launched.

Who is old enough to remember Y2K? I remember it well (translation: i’m old).

Y2K is an acronym for “Year 2000,” or, as it was also known – “The Year 2000 problem, the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, the Y2K bug, or simply Y2K.” (source) It was the moment when the clocks struck 12:00 AM on Janury 1, 2000 and how it might affect every aspect of our lives. Why?

The year 2000 was a problem for many computers because many computer programs stored years using only the last two digits of the year; for example, 1980 was stored as “80”, the year 1999 was stored as “99” and the year 2000 would be stored as “00”.

Do you see the problem? Not only did such systems view the year 2000 as “00”, but they also viewed the year 1900 as “00”. Imagine what would happen to half your programs if your computer suddenly thought the current year (2013) was actually the year 1913. Your calendar program, your watch, your smart phone and many other programs we rely on would suddenly be all wacked out. Imagine what would happen to the banking system if this glitch occurred. Would you be able to access your money? Would all your checks suddenly bounce? (On the other hand, maybe the banks would suddenly give us 100 years of accrued interest. But i digress …)

Now imagine if such a glitch were to occur in bigger systems like nuclear electric plants and nuclear weapons? What might go wrong? This is what had a lot of people in a near state of panic.

Would telephone systems shutdown? Would the electric grid turn off across the country – plunging all of us into darkness for an indeterminant amount of time? Would trains run on schedule? Would the air traffic control system lose control? Would our nuclear arsenal behave in some unpredicted manner and cause WWIII? Would the nuclear arsenal in some other country malfunction and bomb us?

It seemed nobody knew for sure what would – or would not – happen. People were concerned and scared.

Enter my favorite moron – Alex Jones.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, the night the clocks were due to change over to the year 2000, The Alex Jones show engaged in some of the most negligent, egregious and irresponsible scare mongering ever. I don’t know of a worse case than this.

In the 3 hours Jones was on the air, he made every conceivable claim of catastrophe imaginable. He took everything people were fearing about Y2K and he claimed those fears were materializing. Everything from cash machines failing, nuclear power plants shutting down, concentration camps (with shackles) being readied, empty grocery store shelves, gas stations out of gas, Martial Law declared, the military serving search warrants in 77 Texas counties – to an actual nuclear missile attack!!!!!!!!

And did any of this actually occur? No. None of it. People were so frightened they reportedly headed for the hills (literally) and got physically sick.

Bill Cooper’s original broadcast was 3 hours long. In the Alex Jones recording i present below, except for the opening 30 seconds, i have edited out all of Bill Cooper’s narratives so you can hear Alex Jones uninterrupted in all his despicable glory.

As i was going through the audio, i noticed breaks in the Alex Jones audio that i assume were done by Bill Cooper’s editing team in preparation for broadcast. Where ever i believed there was an edit i added a half-second “beep” sound. This is to help avoid confusion as the conversation would sometimes abruptly change topics. So listen for the beeps (you can’t miss them).

Below the audio you will find a complete transcript of notes i made of what to expect in the audio. This will help you follow along. Where ever you see the word “Regurgitation,” that is my own shorthand to indicate it is a previously mentioned point being repeated by Jones – a tactic he uses to give the impression he has a pile of information. Any words [inside brackets] are commentaries i made for myself.

Believe me, this is an audio clip Alex Jones wishes would go away.

Enjoy!

🙂

Mason I. Bilderberg.

P.S. If anybody knows where i can find a copy of the full 3 hour Alex Jones Show from 12/31/1999 please let me know.

1:39 Pennsylvania nuclear plant (Limerick Generating Station) has been shut down [implied because of Y2K-related problems. Not true. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) findings are contained in the image, below]

1:49 The shelves (In TX) are empty of water and gas stations are running out of fuel

3:12 The government in Washington D.C. has set up a $50M command bunker that is hooked into FEMA and they can take over all the shortwave (radio), AM/FM radio stations and all television and other broadcast stations

3:34 The police and military [presumably nationwide] are on high alert

3:41 The military are highly visible [presumably in the streets]

3:45 Trains of military equipment moving into Austin, TX

3:53 The airport (Robert Mueller Airport) will be used as a massive holding facility [ala concentration camps]

6:00 They (Russia) have deployed their missiles and submarines against us (America).

6:09 Vladimir Putin, who just took over as Russian President, has “taken the codes off” Russia’s nuclear arsenal. (The Russian nuclear arsenal no longer requires a secret code to initiate a nuclear missile attack on America.)

6:25 Discussing America being hit with a nuclear first-strike and the ensuing annihilation.

7:27 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania Electric Company (PECO), Limerick Generating Station (here and here) was shutdown [presumably because of Y2K-related problems. Not true. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) findings are contained in the image, below].

7:38 Doesn’t challenge a caller paraphrasing (Colonel) Bo Gritz who said, that Russia said, if their (Russia) power goes out they will blame us and they (Russia) would set off their nuclear arsenal.

8:01 The Russians are threatening to nuke us every, single week.

8:25 Currencies around the world are plunging

8:39 Gas stations in America are out of gas

8:58 American’s are standing up as Russia threatens to attack us with nuclear weapons

9:02 Nuclear power plants are being shutdown

9:07 The military is “running around” with the police and the FBI saying terrorism is imminent [the takeover is beginning]

9:25 “They” have activated a powerful, cold war, radar system in the north pole region [presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack] that is affecting shortwave (radio)

9:46 Military traffic is EVERYWHERE

9:52 Regurgitation: Super power, cold war radar systems (presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack) and nuclear systems are up.

10:07 Fresno (California?) is blacked out, he (Jones) is off the internet

10:25 [Scare tactic, Survivalist Commercial]

11:03 “America is under siege right now.”

11:14 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

11:33 Egypt is having a run on the banks

11:45 Regurgitation: The power in Fresno (California?) is down, he is off the internet

11:50 Regurgitation: Cash machines and ATMs in Europe are having problems

12:03 Martial Law signs are posted on highway 65 in Arkansas by the Arkansas Transportation Department

21:18 There are “shackles on the ground, concreted into the ground” at Robert Mueller Airport – like a slave galley.

21:42 New Zealand is having power outages

21:57 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

22:33 Regurgitation: Vladimir Putin threatens to nuke us

22:50 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

22:55 The power is off in 8 different areas across the country

22:58 A lot of cable systems aren’t working

23:01 Satellites are down

23:09 “Minor fault (???) struck two nuclear power plants in Japan just seconds after the clock ticked into 2000 …”

23:25 Anybody near a nuclear power plant should pack up and go someplace else.

23:37 The store shelves are bare in Austin, TX.

23:43 Regurgitation: Gas is running out.

23:44 They’re announcing on the news that, “if you’re bad they’re going to put you in a … they’re going to bolt you to a pipe coming out of the ground at the airport (Robert Mueller Airport) in some cold hangar.”

24:04 “The military is serving search warrants now in 77 Texas counties.”

24:08 Regurgitation: “We got nuclear power plants shutting down.”

24:20 Regurgitation: The Russians are threatening to nuke us RIGHT NOW.

28:36 Regurgitation: It’s on ABC news that 5 nuclear missiles have been launched.

28:57 The night before (12/30/99), anything and everything on the flight line at Selfridge Air National Guard Base was put into the air and was constantly in the air. [i.e. The U.S. is preparing for a nuclear attack]

29:11 Regurgitation: Super power, cold war radar systems [presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack] are turned on.

29:21 The Russians are not the only ones we need to be concerned about … we should worry about the Chinese too.

20:24 We also need to be worried about Germany.

29:58 Regurgitation: It’s on ABC news that 5 nuclear missiles have been launched.

In this day and age of global warming alarmism people either forgot or don’t know that there was a time only 35 years ago when “scientists” were screaming and warning us of the coming ice age.

From 1938 to 1978 CO2 concentration were rising while temperatures were declining.

Below is an episode of “in Search of …”, a 1970s show hosted by Leonard ‘Mr. Spock’ Nimoy that explored mysteries of the day. This particular episode first aired in May, 1978 and explores “The Coming Ice Age.”

I find this episode interesting because they present the same historical data and trends we’re familiar with today – including the 40 year temperature decline that had begun 40 years earlier. But in the late 70s alarmists interpreted this data to mean an ice age was imminent.

Then in the early to mid 80s temperatures showed some warming and some of these same scientists spun around 180 degrees and declared the globe was now warming instead. A great example of this flip-flop is “Stanford University’s noted global warming alarmist and Al Gore advisor Stephen Schneider”(source) who appears in this 1978 episode endorsing and discussing the coming ice age – only to flip to a global WARMING alarmist position when it was convenient.

With the lack of warming over the last 17 years, i wonder how long before “science” decides we’re not headed for a scalding cauldron of death and destruction. Let me guess: as soon as somebody figures out how to create a multi-billion dollar industry to support and tax the new alarmist position.

I consider myself a collector of sorts. I collect strange, bizarre notions and theories that warp traditional narratives about reality and existence. The following is a presentation of 10 of my favorite mind-blowing theories. There is compelling evidence for each, but you certainly don’t – and, for the sake of your sanity, probably shouldn’t – need to take them as gospel.

1 • The Singularity: We will transcend biology and live as posthuman Gods

Futurists like Ray Kurzweil say in the coming decades humans will experience a technological singularity by which we will transcend biology itself. Intelligent civilizations such as ours, says Kurzweil, are destined to evolve into super-intelligent, possibly machine-based beings whose computational powers grow exponentially.

After such a singularity, we would be able to harness the power of our own sun in order to accomplish interstellar feats only dreamed of in science fiction, such as creating Dyson Spheres and literally saturating the known universe with consciousness.

Some progressive thinkers like Noam Chomsky have labeled the theory science fiction, while others question the classist undertones of the theory’s transhumanist enthusiasts.

Project Blue Beam is a highly controversial conspiracy theory. Originally proposed by Canadian journalist Serge Monast in 1994, it holds that the New World Order will use advanced holographic technology in order to create a false flag alien invasion and/or a worldwide religious “awakening” in order to achieve servitude by the masses and acceptance of a one world government and religion and possibly depopulation efforts as well.

There are supposedly 4 parts to the implementation of Project Blue Beam. These stages include:

The dissolution of major religions due to archaeological discoveries disproving them.

A holographic “space show” in which deities and aliens appear as our overlords (it is not clear how these two would coexist).

Telepathic Electronic Two Way Communication, via ELF(Extra Low Frequency), VLF (Very Low Frequency), and LF (Low Frequency) waves, whereby people will think they are being spoken to by the new true God or extraterrestrial overlords.

Use of worldwide microchips to fabricate horrifying supernatural events that will make people desperate for the New World Order.

Predictive programming is the idea that society embeds messages into pop culture media and other modes of transmission in order to psychologically prepare and incubate the general population for certain events. It is, of course, a conspiracy theory,

Many people maintain instances of predictive programming are simply coincidences on par with synchronicity and Déjà vu; others say they are sinister calling cards for shadow groups who communicate across media channels through coded signals.
(Source)

4 • Human DNA contains the signature of an alien creator

New evidence is suggesting that instead of searching the stars with telescopes, we should have been searching our DNA with microscopes. Vladimir I. shCherbak of al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Kazakhstan, and Maxim A. Makukov of the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute claim they have discovered an intelligent signal inside human DNA. In this case, “biological SETI” as it’s known, involves “arithmetical and ideographical patterns of symbolic language.”

In other words, it’s possible that an intelligent species encoded a message or signature into the very structure of our DNA. (Source | Photo)

With the recent Blood Moon there are several people going around that are “predicting” that the end of the world is near… again. Most notable of those predicting the end of the world is Pastor John Hagee.

This whole “end of the world” thing has once again got me thinking about all of the people who have made doomsday predictions, and more than once.

I decide to look around Wikipedia and have found quite a number of people who have made multiple doomsday predictions that didn’t happen.

So here are ten people that made multiple end of the world predictions:

If I’m going to start this list I might as well start it off with him.

Harold Camping, the now infamous evangelical preacher and founder of the Christian radio station Family Radio, used some mathematical equations, along with some calender dates and dates in the Bible, to predict when the Rapture was going to occur, and the eventual end of the world itself.

Most of you are probably thinking I’m referring to his failed 2011 end of the world predictions, which I am. I’m also referring to his failed end of the world prediction for 1995, and his three failed end of the world predictions in 1994.

One would think that someone whom had failed to predict the end of the world four times before that no one would listen to this guy’s last end of the world prediction. But alas, not only did people listen, but they also spent millions of dollars on an advertisement campaign that basically told people they were about to die.

I’m sure most people in America know who Pat Robertson is. He’s the host of The 700 Club, as well as the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University, and is considered to be one of the most famous televangelists in the United States, if not the world.

He’s also made a failed prediction about the end of the world… twice.

His first failed prediction was that the “Day of Judgement” would happen sometime in late 1982. He didn’t give a specific day when it would happen, only that it was going to happen sometime around then.

For his second failed prediction he did give a specific date of when it the end of the world might happen, that date being April 29, 2007. Ofcourse for this prediction he didn’t actually say that the end of the world would happen on that, only that it might happen.

Leader of the notorious polygamist cult the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and convicted child molester, Warren Jeffs predicted, twice while in prison, that the world would end.

His first prediction for doomsday was for December 23, 2012. When that failed to occur he blamed his followers for that failure due to a “lack of faith” (because apparently you have to have a lot of faith inorder to make the apocalypse happen) and then moved his prediction to New Years Eve of that year.

I guess his followers still lacked enough faith to bring about the end of the world. Or maybe he just got the date wrong again?

Herbert Armstrong was the founder of the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College. Throughout his lifetime he and and his advisers met with numerous leaders in various governments throughout the world, for which he described himself as an “ambassador without portfolio for world peace.”

He also made four end of the world predictions, all of which clearly failed.

His first end of the world prediction was that the Rapture was suppose to occur in 1936, and that only followers of his church were going to be saved.

When that failed he revised he prediction that the end would happen sometime in 1943, and when that failed he revised it again for 1972, and when that failed he revised it again and said that the world would end in 1975.

Considering that fact that he failed to predict the end of the world four times, why anyone, more or less heads of state, would ever listen to this guy is beyond me.

Founder of the Church of God, Preparing for the Kingdom of God (damn that’s a long name) a splinter sect of the Worldwide Church of God (what a surprise), and convicted tax evader Ronald Weinland predicted that Jesus Christ would come back and that the world would end on September 29, 2011… and May 27, 2012… and May 19, 2013.

You’re not reading that wrong. Ronald Weinland, three years in a row predicted that the world would end, and each and every time he did… nothing happen.

No word yet from him on whether or not the world is suppose to end this year.

The Internet was meant to usher in a new enlightenment, instead it is became the breeding ground of ideas increasingly at odds with reality.

The Reptilian’s cloaking field breaks down and begins to phase shift, its inhuman visage briefly visible through a haze of holographic error. Slowed down and set to music, it is an eerie, emotive, and strangely beautiful sight. Our alien slavemasters the Annunaki are getting sloppy, not even caring if their true forms are visible to us any more. Wake up, sheeple, wake up and see what is before your eyes!

Or, at least this is what some followers of David Icke and other reptilian “researchers” seem to think. According to this video, which at time of writing has over 155,000 views, it appears that some of his disciples are so seduced by the strange worldview that they see trans-dimentional shapeshifters where others see video glitches or interference errors. A new face for an ancient malevolence, hitherto visualised mentally in dragon statues or crumby drawings of lizard-men. YouTuber MKirkbll comments “Finally! A legitimate shapeshifting video! I so badly wanted to believe. Now I can. Thank you.” Like an X-Files era cliche, MKirkbll here “wants to believe”. And he is so desperate to believe in something, he is willing to believe in anything, as long as it all fits together to tell an understandable story and gives him a sense of belonging.

It is easy to look at such nonsense and laugh, but the existence of such beliefs tell us something much deeper about human psychology and our need to make sense of the world. Since the earliest times humans have together woven complex and colourful mythologies to explain the the world around them, and today is no different. During our evolution, our brains’ storytelling ability acted as a form of data compression to keep track of what information it deemed useful, tying sensory prompts to emotional and behavioural responses. The consequence of using language and stories to keep track of environmental information was the gradual development of a narrative Self. Through studying psychology, we also know how identity construction within a social environment leads to emergent group behaviours that in turn tell us how group narratives are formed.

Some of those lessons are particularly relevant to the online realm, where a breezy brand of digital utopianism has led to a belief that the free flow of information will lead to an end of ignorance and the triumph of reason. Instead, we see the rise of bizarre new ideologies and ideas spreading virally across the web, ushering in not a New Enlightenment, but an Age of Unreason.

Emergent Hierarchies

Group Psychology has been extensively studied over the last half century with theories supported by strong experimental evidence and predictive ability. Leon Festinger’s famous 1956 study of a flying saucer cult documented the moments in which the group’s ideology evolved in light of a failed doomsday prophecy. Cult leader Marian Keech had told her followers the world would end at midnight while they, the chosen few, would be swooped away to safety in the comfort of a spacecraft. However as armageddon failed to materialise, minutes ticked awkwardly by and the cult members began to wonder what was going to happen next. Eventually Keech concocted an absurd excuse to explain why the world had not ended; our prayer averted the apocalypse!

The study, which was a precursor to his theory of Cognitive Dissonance, is famous for predicting which members of the group would drift away and which would rationalise away the failure and turn in into something to strengthen rather than weaken their beliefs. But also interesting is that Festinger reported that . . .

The New World Order, or NWO, is one of the most well-known conspiracy theories in modern history, right up there with the faked moon landings. In fact, there are those who believe that the NWO orchestrated the fake landings to reinforce their control over the population. Like a handful of cookie crumbs, the NWO has a way of slipping into the cracks behind every other far-fetched theory, and like entropy, the theories about them only get bigger with time. Just keep in mind that as plausible as these theories sound, they are, unfortunately, absolutely insane.

10 • The Ten Kings Prophecy

Conspiracy theories that begin with the Bible are nothing new, but according to some people, the New World Order was very specifically predicted in the Book of Revelation. The Ten Kings Prophecy is the theory that 10 nations will rise to power and create a new government. The “prophecy” usually quoted for this comes from Revelation 17:12, which reads “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.”

The idea of a small group of people ruling the world is entirely what the NWO is about, so it’s no wonder that this is seen as a direct prediction of a new world order. And if you study a prediction enough, you’ll start to see it everywhere. The problem, of course, is that nobody can actually agree on where it’s happening.

There are those who think that the Club of Rome is the seat of the NWO, because they published a paper in 1973 that recommended splitting the world into 10 regions. If you crawl even deeper into the fog, you find others touting the G8 as the group of 10 kings from Revelation. Put that calculator away—there are only eight world leaders in the G8, but proponents of the theory predict that it will one day expand to include 10 core nations, signaling the start of Armageddon and, probably, the end of life as we know it.

9 • Population Control

In order to maintain its iron grip over the world, the NWO would have to trim off some of the excess population. According to conspiracy theorists, that means killing most of the planet and leaving about two billion people to continue the human race. These survivors would obviously be the best of the best—scientists, engineers, writers, and politicians—and they would live underground in cities connected by maglev trains. Alternatively, they’ll use alien technology to build bases on the Moon.

Exactly how the New World Order will trim down the population is a point of contention among theorists. Some people believe that a virus bioengineered by the NWO will wipe out the majority of the population, while others hold firm that Obamacare is slowly poisoning people with vaccines. Other purported methods range from devastating drone strikes to educating people about abortion.

8 • Silent Sound Spread Spectrum

One big theory about the NWO is that they use mind control on the general population. While that’s a constant in almost every conspiracy theory, NWO believers think that, when the time comes, the world leaders will flip a switch and instantly force the population into submission. If such a technology were that important to achieving their totalitarian goals, they would obviously try to test it first.

Silent sound spread spectrum (SSSS) is the term most commonly used, although it’s also called “voice to skull” (V2K) technology. It’s almost a cliche these days when a person complains that the government is putting voices in their heads, but they’re still popping up all over the place. One example that’s always repeated on conspiracy theory websites is that the US military used SSSS on Iraqi soldiers, causing them to surrender immediately.

The idea of setting up a system to send microwave signals into the mind of every American—not to mention the rest of the world—is ludicrous at best, but this theory is a cornerstone of the New World Order curriculum.

7 • Blueprints In Literature

In 1928, H.G. Wells published a book called The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution. In the book, he lays out a recipe for establishing a new world order that will last for generations, all of which will be run by the “Atlantic” elite. In 1940, he followed it up with the aptly named The New World Order.

Most people are familiar with H.G. Wells from books like The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, but his guidelines for the New World Order were anything but fiction. As an outspoken socialist, he believed that a world government was inevitable and that widespread eugenics was the proper course for humanity.

True to form, conspiracy theorists are quick to assume that his NWO literature is “required reading” for the world elite. They see it not necessarily as a prediction but as the impetus that brought the “current” New World Order into existence in the first place.

6 • Majestic 12

The conspiracy theory of the Majestic 12 goes something like this: In the 1940s, President Truman commissioned a secret committee of scientists and government employees to keep track of the UFOs that were plaguing America’s skies. The organization, Majestic 12, was kept top secret, but over the years, various documents have surfaced that seem to “prove” their existence.

That’s not what this is about.

According to conspiracy theorists, the government created the entire thing as a hoax in order to keep the public’s attention away from the real threat: aliens in the government. The NWO isn’t headed by the elite of humanity, per se—it’s being planned by aliens who already have humanity’s elite under their control. Majestic 12 is a convoluted mess of a conspiracy within a conspiracy, and while we’re all concerned about it, the aliens have been propelling human look-alikes to powerful government positions and giving us AIDS.

No, Asteroid 2003 QQ47 Is NOT Going to Hit the Earth Next Week

Well, it took three months, but we have our first notpocalypse of 2014!

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are spreading a story that a large asteroid named 2003 QQ47 might impact the Earth next week, specifically on March 21, 2014.

Let me be very clear right away: Nope. It won’t. This story is totally wrong! Well, the asteroid does exist, but it won’t hit us next week, and in fact can’t hit the Earth for at least a century. The truth is the asteroid will safely pass us on March 26 of this year, never getting closer than 19 million kilometers (nearly 12 million miles)—about 50 times farther away than the Moon!

[…]

I’m pretty sure what’s happening here is that a very old story has been recycled and is getting spread around without anyone doing any fact-checking. It’s all over Twitter and got picked up credulously by some bigger venues like the Daily Mail, which posted it with the typically understated title of “Asteroid hurtles toward Earth.” What follows after that is a breathless and almost entirely incorrect article about 2003 QQ47 that seems to simply rehash information from more than a decade ago. Seriously.*

For example, the Mail article says the asteroid is “newly discovered,” but in fact was first detected in 2003, 11 years ago! Hence its name, 2003 QQ47. It was found to be a near-Earth asteroid, or NEA, one that does sometimes get close to us. For a while after it was discovered it was thought to have a small chance of hitting Earth, with an impact probability in August 2014 of about 1 in 250,000. But by September 2003 new observations allowed a better trajectory to be calculated, and an impact in 2014 was ruled out. This happens quite often, where a new asteroid will have only a rough orbit calculated, and an impact has long but non-zero odds of hitting us. As more observations come in the chances of impact can actually increase briefly before dropping to zero.

This is what happened with QQ47 back in 2003. Got that? An impact in 2014, this year, was shown to be out of the question more than a decade ago and was even taken off JPL’s Sentry Risk page at that time, when it was found to have no potential Earth impacts for at least 100 years. We’re quite safe from this particular asteroid.

Ancient aliens is the idea that aliens visited earth in the past. The idea of ancient aliens is not a new one either. Imagination is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s evolutionary struggle for survival. As a race, we are hardwired to consider important concepts, such as the creation of life on Earth and the history of people on this planet. At some point, we are all presented with various explanations and theories regarding the expansion of human life on Earth. In the long history of mankind, the majority of these concepts have followed religious teachings, and the power of a spiritual God or Gods. In modern times, many people have come to challenge these claims.

The idea of evolution has been used to describe the gradual change of traits that living organisms undergo over time, which is related to the environment, but it doesn’t explain how the biological cells of human’s first ancestor were spawned. Because of the fact that everyone is interested in the creation of life on Earth, and concurrently we have been taught to believe in the power of religion and the impossibility of alien life, the idea that this article will be examining is controversial. It will be based around some concepts that have been labeled absurd by the scientific community, but let your imagination go, and have some fun with the list.

10 • Ancient Aliens

The idea surrounding ancient aliens is a basic one. It states that the human population was influenced by a group of extraterrestrials that visited Earth in the past. The ancient aliens were directly involved in the evolution of primates, including humans. It has been suggested that this was accomplished by way of genetic engineering, cross-breeding, or a combination of both, ultimately helping in the development of human cultures, technologies and religion. The idea first gained widespread exposure with the 1968 publication of Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, but the concept has been around since the middle of the 19th century. A common variant of the idea includes proposals that deities from most, if not all, religions, including angels and demons, are actually extraterrestrials whose advanced technologies were taken by people as evidence of a divine status.

This concept is related to the religious practice of a cargo cult, which can be seen in modern day pre-industrial tribal societies. Especially during World War II, when indigenous people were contacted by soldiers with advanced equipment, such as guns and tanks. The cults subsequently attempted to obtain wealth through magic and religious rituals and practices. The ancient alien theory states that extraterrestrials purposely tricked the human population into believing they were Gods, creating religion to help people evolve more efficiently. The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

It has been proposed that, with the current age of the universe and its vast number of stars, if the Earth was typical, extraterrestrial life should be common. In response to this paradox, the zoo hypothesis has been suggested. It states that aliens generally avoid making their presence known to humanity, or avoid exerting an influence on development, somewhat akin to zookeepers observing animals in a zoo, or experimental scientists observing a study of life. Adherents of the hypothesis feel that the Earth and humans are being secretly surveyed using equipment located on Earth, or elsewhere in the Solar System. Charles Fort’s unpublished 1915 manuscript, novel X, describes how Martian beings or Martian events control life on Earth. Fort ultimately burnt the manuscript, but one surviving quote from it is “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”

9 • Angels and Demons

The idea of ancient alien as astronauts has spawned a UFO religion named Raëlism. The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of the Elohim appeared human and were mistaken for angels, cherubim or gods. The Bible is full of accounts of angels and demons. The text mentions millions of angels and their experiences on Earth and in the heavens. In Christian tradition, demons are similar to angels. They are spiritual, immutable and immortal. The individual demon owns a specific knowledge, sometimes on only one subject. The apocryphal Book of Enoch recounts that a group of 200 rebellious angels, or Watchers, left heaven and came down to Earth to marry human women and have children with them.

The Quran depicts a story of angels that are given minds of their own, found in verse [2:34]. One of the angels was Iblis (Satan/Lucifer), who rebelled and was therefore banished on earth to create mischief amongst mankind. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, angels were all created as good beings, but some decided to become evil. It was written that angels do not need faith as they already have the knowledge of celestial things, which means that their action constitutes unforgivable sin. The idea of alien intervention on Earth can be found in the modern religious philosophy of Thelema. Thelema was developed by the early 20th century British writer, Aleister Crowley.

Crowley’s system of Thelema begins with The Book of the Law, which he claims was a direct dictation from an entity named Aiwass. Crowley later identified Aiwass as his own Holy Guardian Angel. The religion is founded upon the idea that the 20th century marked the beginning of the Aeon of Horus, in which a new ethical code would be followed; “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The famed American rocket propulsion researcher, Jack Parsons, was one of the first Americans to take a keen interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley. Parsons research into rocket propulsion was some of the earliest in United States history. His pioneering work in the development of solid fuel, and the invention of Jet-fuel Assisted Take Off units for aircraft was of great importance to the start of humanity’s space age. The work of Parsons and his peers helped people usher in the age of space travel. Jack Parsons was largely self-educated.

8 • Men in Black

The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the theory that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets. The idea sounds simple to modern day humans, but it a relatively new concept that originated out of the saucer sightings and close encounters of the 1940s-1960s. Thousands of UFO sightings have been reported in the last 50 years, and one of the emerging themes in these events is the Men in Black. The Men in Black are men, or aliens, dressed in black suits who have been reported to harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. In most cases, the men claim to be government agents, but it is often suggested that they may be ancient aliens themselves.

People who have reported an encounter with the Men in Black often describe them as men of short stature with a deeply tanned and dark complexion. According to the accounts, Men in Black always seem to have detailed information on the person they contact, as if the individual had been under surveillance for a long period of time. They have been described as seeming confused by the nature of everyday items such as pens, eating utensils or food, as well as using outdated slang. Those who have encountered them say they produce identification, but when verification is later sought, the people described do not exist or have been dead for some time. Another defining characteristic of the Men in Black is wide grins and disconcerting giggles.

The phenomenon has been frequently reported since the 1950s and 1960s, but some researchers, including John Keel and others, have suggested similarities between the Men in Black reports and earlier demonic accounts. Keel suggests that the beings are a modern-day manifestation of the same phenomena that was earlier interpreted as the devil, or encounters with fairies. The term “the black man” has been used for centuries in reference to the Devil. In history, the Black Man was often reported as meeting with the accused and having sexual intercourse with them. Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is another folk name for The Devil that is used in the local legends of New England and pre-Civil War America.

During the Middle Ages, the black man was not a person with African features, but rather a man colored black and dressed in black. In modern times, another phenomenon known as the Grinning Man has become associated with the Men in Black, and various reports of paranormal activity. These creatures are larger and characterized by a wide grinning face. In most cases, people describe a strange sensation of not being able to focus in on the Grinning Man. It has been suggested that the smile is an attempt by the aliens to conform to society and keep humans feeling safe, but in all reports the figure is described as extremely creepy. In the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games, there is a mysterious character named G-Man that parallels some of the Men in Black descriptions.

#4. “River of Blood” Turns Out to Be an Ink Spill

In late December, residents of the English village of Moulton were left somewhat confused and extremely creeped out when they woke up one morning and found that their local brook had been stained with the blood-red shades of murder. Or murders, because seriously, that’s a fuckload of red.

The villagers rushed to their laptops and informed various social media outlets of their running river of blood, some comparing it to a horror film and others quoting the Book of Revelations, fearing that it was the first sign of the apocalypse. So what was it? A bleeding whale? A serial killer convention? That creepy clown that recently showed up nearby? Nope, the red coloration was caused by nothing other than an ink spill. So the world won’t end, but the villagers may have to endure a red pen shortage for the next decade.

#3. Mysterious Crop Circle Is Just a Publicity Stunt

Another strange event at the end of 2013 that made people think the Mayans may have been off by a year was the mysterious crop circle that popped up in a farmer’s barley field in Chualar, California. The design was so intricately done that the farmer told CNN that he was “baffled” by its appearance.

He was immediately given a first-option deal by the History Channel.Watch: Nvidia

Naturally, as soon as the story broke, crop circle experts all over the Internet wrote in-depth analyses that claimed to have decoded the secret alien message in the fields, with some of these Fox Mulders declaring that it meant a bright comet would appear this year (presumably foreshadowing some dragons). It was at this point that tech company Nvidia couldn’t contain its giggling any longer and revealed that the crop circle was actually a marketing stunt promoting their latest processing chip. It’s unclear if the farmer was in on the joke or if those dicks stomped his barley without telling him.

On the upside, his field can now run Crysis 3 without lag.Watch: Nvidia

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we’re all gonna die.

Again.

I mean, what is this? This 452nd time this has happened, or something? Between Mayan apocalypses and Christian End Times predictions and the planet Nibiru and plagues and pandemics and the Harmonic Convergence and the Yellowstone Supervolcano (which is still overdue for an eruption!), it’s kind of surprise we’re all still here.

This time, the world is going to end because we’re going to be destroyed by a rogue planet that is hurtling in toward the inner Solar System at a speed of 200 kilometers per second. So says a report on Turner Radio Network, which claims that “Dr. Kaplan, a Professor in the Astronomy Department at the University of Texas at Austin” has discovered a large object that is heading toward us — and that even if it doesn’t hit us directly, “the gravity will affect the Earth in terrible ways long before it gets here.”

[image courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Dr. Kaplan made a video (linked on the website) wherein he projected the planet’s arrival time as August 2014, which is the only thing I find that is cheerful about this prediction. It gives me the summer to recover from the progressive hypothermia I’ve experienced this winter, so at least I’ll finally be comfortably warm by the time I get vaporized. And it also means that whatever else happens, I won’t have to endure another upstate New York winter, because interaction with the planet will cause “shifting of the tectonic plates on a massive scale.” I can only hope that our tectonic plate will shift toward the equator. If that’s an outcome of a planetary collision, then all I can say is, bring it on, because I have had it with the snow.

Of course, the other predictions are more dire. “(I)f Kaplan’s scenario is true, the problems Earth will experience would begin with weather anomalies and tidal anomalies, will increase to earthquakes then volcanic eruptions as Earth’s magma is pulled by the gravity of the approaching planet,” the Turner Radio Broadcast report said. “The experts went on to tell us the troubles would increase further to horrific tsunamis 1000 meters high, moving at 1200 kilometers per hour striking coastal regions around the Earth… One expert even claimed that depending upon the size and gravity of the planet, and its angle of approach, the gravity of this other planet could actually STOP the Earth from rotating on its axis. He likened it to a vehicle traveling at 1,000 miles per hour, and having the brakes slammed on; the resulting inertia of all objects on earth would cause them to continue moving while the earth was stopping; sort of like what happens in a car wreck when the car suddenly stops, but the passengers fly forward from their own inertia.”

So that kind of sucks. And after the article goes into all of that, they ask a few pertinent questions, such as . . .

Poisonous Government Snow

Georgia isn’t good at snow. Two inches fell in Atlanta last month and, amidst car crashes and television parodies, snow skepticism was born. Georgians bravely took to YouTube, determined to demonstrate that neither matches nor lighters nor blowtorches (a disproportionate number of Georgians seem to own blowtorches) could melt that strange, white stuff that the government insisted was just frozen water. On film, the snow blackens, twists like plastic, and stubbornly refuses to melt.Although entire Web pages are dedicated to debunking the chemical snow theory, the simplest way to deal with snow skeptics is to put the stuff in a microwave or on the stove. Spoiler: It melts. The blackened snow was caused by soot from the lighter, because butane burns inefficiently, and as snow turns into slush under a blowtorch, it only appears not to melt. Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait explains how the snow is, in fact, slowly melting.

The entire episode, however, brings up a good question: Who was the first Georgian to decide to burn the snow, just to see what would happen?

Invasion of the Lizard People

Look around you. If you’re in a room with 25 other people, odds are at least one of them believes the world is run by lizard people, according to a recent poll. Conspiracy junkies are well aware of the theory that cleverly disguised reptilian aliens traveled to Earth thousands of years ago to infiltrate our highest echelons of government. Proof exists in the form of terrifying YouTube videos revealing news anchors with reptilian eyes, and lack of any better explanation for Rob Ford.You can dispatch the reptilian eye claim with relative ease, but only if you’re willing to suffer through 3 minutes of this awful techno music. The quick version: If a video file is compressed, sped up, and zoomed in, a clever video editor can transform any human eye into a menacing reptilian slit. But if you insist on clinging to the lizard government theory, at least be prepared.

Siri Apocalypse

What is July 27, 2014? Check your calendar, and you’ll notice that it’s a Sunday. But ask Siri, and you might discover that the 27th is the appointed time for the Opening of the Gates of Hades. Several shocked iPhone users reported last month that Siri had officially scheduled the apocalypse for this summer, in an odd move that the usual suspects took quite seriously.This particular trick didn’t work when when we tried it, but we can’t promise it never happened. Apple developers are strange birds, and iPhone users are still discovering odd pearls of wisdom and other Easter eggs coded into Siri. Various sources attribute the arbitrary doomsday date in this conspiracy theory to a Chinese ghost month or the end of Ramadan, when Muslims believe that the gates of hell reopen. But a few weird programmers do not an apocalypse make, and we are fairly confident that Siri has no idea when the world will end.

Adam and Eve? Superintelligent Beings From Outer Space

Now that even Bill Nye has weighed in on the debate about creationism and evolution, some of us would welcome any sort of common ground between science and religion. The ancient alien theory may offer a solution: Adam and Eve were extraterrestrials who traveled to Earth aboard a space ark piloted by—you guessed it—Noah. Predictably, the conspiracy theorists say, proof of this story abounds—but the government insists on keeping it all under lock and key. Several “scholars” now claim that, through the Freedom of Information Act, they were finally able to access piles of declassified documents. Official reports, they say, prove that a flying saucer once crashed into Mt. Ararat in Turkey, where it is traditionally believed that Noah’s ark came to rest after the great Flood.

Anyway, it just doesn’t seem likely that Noah’s intergalactic starship, after tumbling through space and dodging meteor showers, finally ran aground in Turkey. But forgetting this silly story for a second, there is the real scientific idea of panspermia, which raises the possibility that our planet’s first single-celled organisms have extraterrestrial origins.

Like an out of control flood of death and destruction, silly rumors and scares about the aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster continue to emanate from a toxic slagheap and pour into the world, causing fear and panic buying of worthless detox junk. Scientists and skeptics, armed with virtual mallets, slam these demonic hedgehogs of lies back into their dark holes; only for more to pop out of the ground, clutching new rumors and scares in their foaming maws.

But major media outlets and scientists haven’t been silent. There are solid, scientifically-sound pieces all over the internet from the likes of Time, the LA Times, the New York Times, Forbes, Daily Kos, Popular Mechanics, Slate and others. There is also excellent debunking by experts of all stripes, from physicists to marine biologists to nuclear engineers, at places like Deep Sea News and Southern Fried Science. Finally, there are my humble attempts to bring some sanity to the madness.

So in the spirit of good science and healthy snark, here’s Volume 4 of my Fukushima series.

This one is actually a decent litmus test for whether a person is serious about the impact of Fukushima. If they take this obvious hoax to be reality, they probably aren’t that bright and shouldn’t be listened to. For the record, Snopes demolished this the same day it hit the web, finding the two pictures Photoshopped together to create the hoax, and driving down to Santa Monica to ensure that, no, Squidzilla had not washed up on Muscle Beach. We’re dealing with moderately humorous satire, and that’s it.

CLAIM: Two underground nuclear explosions rocked the Fukushima site on New Year’s Eve, forcing Russia’s Ministry of Defense to go on high alert – and causing TEPCO to quietly admit that Reactor 3 was melting down. GAME OVER!!!

None of this happened, other than Reactor 3 melting down, which took place right after the tsunami. The original “report” about the “explosions” came from whatdoesitmean.com, one of the least reliable “news” websites on the internet, with a reputation for making up wild conspiracies and insane stories, then tossing them out there for other conspiracy sites to disseminate. Which is exactly what happened here. There were no underground explosions and no high alert.

Not only were there no nuclear explosions, there couldn’t have been. A nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor are not at all the same thing. They’re designed differently to do very different things. Without some kind of detonator and weapons grade nuclear material, which Fukushima doesn’t have, a nuclear explosion literally could not have happened. This is basic nuclear physics, and if you don’t know this, you shouldn’t be sharing anything about Fukushima.

CLAIM: Radioactive steam was seen pouring off Reactor 3, meaning it’s in the middle of a meltdown.

Steam coming off Reactor 3. Because it’s cold outside.

Alternative media sites went crazy right before New Year’s with claims that the west coast was about to be hit by an onslaught of radiation from Reactor 3 in the form of nuclear steam. Putting aside the ludicrousness of “radioactive steam” in Japan killing people on the west coast, the steam, which is real, has a simple explanation, rooted in kindergarten physics.

The reactor is physically hot, because of the decay of nuclear fuel. Of course, this is dangerous, but that’s beside the point.

It’s winter in Japan.

When cold water from rain or snow hits something hot (like a reactor), it turns into steam. Just like your breath.

The steam has been coming off Reactor 3 for almost three years. Panicking about it now makes no sense.

CLAIM: A dude with a Geiger counter went to a California beach and found radiation levels off the charts! Evacuate the west coast at once!

This one has been pretty well covered here at Skeptoid and at other places, so I won’t go into the whole explanation again, except to say that there are any number of reasons why the Geiger counter in the video reads the way it does. Background radiation is everywhere, and in everything (so much for the “no safe dose” meme.) This is especially true of the ocean, which is rich in uranium. That particular area, Pacifica State Beach, is especially radioactive, owing to natural substances in the granite and sand there.

The video is not a source of anything other than a guy with a Geiger counter. California officials dismissed it as scaremongering, and they were right. Your granite countertops will absolutely fry you long before a day at the beach does.

Are you one of those who is eager for the End Time to begin, so you can get raptured away and watch God pour out his wrath on the unrighteous from the catered sky box of Heaven? If not, you probably agree with me that the whole Mark of the Beast thing is pretty stupid. Here are five reasons why.

You might remember the crop circle that suddenly appeared 11 miles southeast of Salinas, California on or about December 28, 2013. As usual, every UFOlogist and woomaster went nuts speculating on the deeper meaning of this symbol – especially as it might pertain to the new year and some kind of cataclysmic event or some kind of awakening. (Woomeisters always predict doom and gloom or some kind of awakening. It’s in their handbook.)

According to one “expert”, the Salinas Crop Circle:

«… contains three coded messages according to renowned crop circle researcher, Dr Horace Drew. According to Dr Drew, a retired molecular biologist who worked at Caltech and Australia’s CSIRO, one of the coded messages was to be vigilant about an upcoming astronomical event. The next message referred to a date in the near future when an astronomical event is to occur by July 8, 2014. The third and most startling message was that comet ISON was a space transportation system. Taken in their entirety, the three messages appear to be encouraging people to watch the skies for an upcoming astronomical event featuring remnants of ISON that will in fact be an extraterrestrial event of some kind.» (source)

You have to love it when an appeal to authority (a retired molecular biologist who worked at Caltech and Australia’s CSIRO) goes horribly wrong.

Another crop researcher Paul Jacobs, who began investigating the Salinas crop circle:

«No one in the area has made claim to it and the locals had no knowledge of it or its construction. I estimate it would have taken three men working in daylight conditions doing 9-hour shifts for nearly 9 days to complete this pattern. My gut feeling is we have an important event on our hands here.» (source)

Well Fox Mulder, the truth is not out there. The truth is right here, on earth … the crop circle was created by the aliens at Nvidia.

«In case you’re not a gamer and don’t know what Nvidia is, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara and pioneers visual computing — the art and science of computer graphics. The crop circle was drawn in the shape of Nvidia’s 192-core super chip, called Tegra K1, and the artists said it was challenging to create.

I can’t resist this excellent example of the human capacity for ad-hoc reasoning and pattern recognition. The Salinas Crop Circle was discovered in late December, and instantly became famous in the crop circle world. It is an example of a complex design, that begs to be interpreted.

Crop circle believers – those who think the designs that are often found drawn in various crops around the world (curiously following cultural lines) are the product of aliens trying to communicate in their abstruse way with humans, like to find meaning in the crop circles. This becomes an exercise in pattern recognition, as they are often trying to find meaning where none exists.

Here is one example. The author, assuming the crop circle is an alien communication, comes up with an elaborate interpretation. He believes it refers to comet ISON, which recently burned up on its journey around the sun. This itself is a good example of “retrodicting.” I would be more impressed if a crop circle predicted something yet to be discovered.

The author interprets that middle square section with dots as braille and comes up with the number 192. It turns out, this is a correct interpretation (more below). He writes:

Its first inner code shows a brief message in Braille saying “192-192-2-192-1-192-192”. This may be a symbolic reference to the British search engine “192.com” (see http://www.192.com). Its implication might be that “the blind will see, and those who search will find”

He tells us 192 is a mystical number that comes up frequently in crop circles. He also interprets some damage to the crops as a comet, the circles around the outer edge as either planets or at marketing the numbers on a clock, and:

Its third intermediate code involves a series of alphabetic characters in Morse code. They seem to read: “E-T B I-S-O-N S-T-S One interpretation of this cryptic message might be: “E T B(e)” or “extra-terrestrials exist”. Then “I-S-O-N (comet)” is an “S-T-S (space transportation system)” like for the NASA space shuttles.

What is interesting is how compelling it seems to us when we can find patterns, especially complex ones. We tend to react as if the fact that we can find a pattern means that it is real. We inherently lack an intuitive understanding of the power of data mining. In other words – we fail to appreciate the possible number of patterns that we can see when we use open-ended criteria. There are countless possible patterns, and the fact that we hit upon one or more means nothing – except that we are good at finding patterns and connections.

The Reveal

This is one of those uncommon cases where we have a definitive answer in the end, which is what makes it such a powerful example. The crop circle was actually commissioned by NVIDIA as a promotional stunt for their new mobile graphics chip. Here is a video of the making of the crop circle:

True believers might try to deny this evidence by saying it occurred after the fact as a distraction, but that is simply not possible. There would not have been time to fake this video, and to come up with an alternate interpretation of the design that so clearly matches NVIDIA’s new chip.

For example, the 192 in braille is accurate, but the 192 refers to the number of processors in the chip. There is a reason why 192 might crop up frequently in the context of computers – because it is 64 x 3, and 64 is a multiple of 8. Because of how computers are built, you will notice that from kilobytes to terabytes, hard drives, flash drives, RAM, etc. all come in such multiples – 64, 128, 256, 512, etc.

It’s interesting that crop circle believers have come to believe that the gray aliens like to communicate in braille. Apparently, so do human crop circle artists.

Watch the video for the full explanation of the meaning in the crop circle. And then see how clever people can be in coming up with alternate interpretations. I guess this is a post-modern approach to crop circles as a narrative form.

On that point – also pay attention to the words of the crop circle artists interviewed in the NVIDIA video. They say, essentially, that part of their art form is creating the crop circles in the context of mystery. It is a collaboration with the crop circle believers, who provide the “other worldly” context and interpretation of their art.

Another artist also says that complex mathematical designs, the ones that look as if they have really complex relationships, are actually the easiest to lay out and create.

This always reminds me of my personal encounter with a crop circle believer who challenged me by saying, “how can they create perfect circles? That’s impossible.” I then introduced her to the concept of a compass, the crop circle equivalent of which is a stake and a rope.

Simple techniques can create mathematical perfection and complexity. That is sort-of the nature of math and geometry, which is all about relationships. These relationships create countless patterns, and believers can plumb the depths of those patterns to their endless satisfaction.

Step 1: Start with the premise that any tragic incident is a massive, intricate government conspiracy.

Step 2: Denounce any information presented by a mainstream, non-conspiracy source that directly counters the predetermined conspiracy narrative as corrupt and part of the conspiracy.

Step 3: Monitor these same mainstream sources for information that supports the predetermined conspiracy narrative, even if only remotely. Mainstream media reporting mistakes that support your conspiracy (or any conspiracy really) must be treated as rare moments of truth, glimpses inside the Matrix. Any mainstream media reports in favor of the conspiracy should be treated like the word of God. Spam that information everywhere.

Step 4: Imagination is the same thing as undeniable fact. There is nothing wrong with manipulating Youtube videos and using Photoshop to edit information to make it more obvious for the stupid sheeple to understand.

Step 5: Reject the skeptics to the conspiracy theories aggressively. Call them out for being sheep, shills, Cointelpro, paid agents, et cetera. Do not ever doubt yourself, because if you think they are any of these nouns, then it is undeniably true. After all, the conspiracy theory you are trying to wake the world up to is a fact. Only a sheep would think otherwise.

Step 6: Bring up the founding of the Federal Reserve, the Bay of Pigs, The Gulf of Tonkin, and other well known deceptive schemes by the government often (every conversation if need be.) These actions were confessed by government, therefore every other conspiracy theory is true!

Step 7: Cite declassified documents often, as they are invaluable. If the government reports that a secret program was started and ended 60 years ago- DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. The secret programs for sure are still occurring and are now more massive, sinister, and successful than before.

Step 8: Remember that most of witnesses and victims involved in conspiracy event are actors. Medical examiners, emergency responders, the police, reporters, they are almost all in on it. The innocent people caught up in the conspiracy were either killed or have been threatened by the conspirators and are too afraid to come forward (or they possibly never existed to begin with.)

Step 9: Blitz the world with the truth until everyone deletes you on Facebook or you are banned from your favorite web sites. Lay low for a period, regroup at your favorite alternative web sites, get encouragement and reinforcement from the other awakened truth seekers, and start the process all over again with a new conspiracy.

As the year 2013 comes to a close, it seems only appropriate that we take a look back at some of the wisdom and predictions heaped upon us just 12 months ago by one of this country’s leading intellectuals – little Mikey Adams from Natural News – and see how accurate this wizard of wonder (As in, “I wonder why people believe anything he says.”) was with foretelling the events of 2013.

So, failure #1: he failed to predict his own humiliation when his 2013 predictions would prove to be so devastatingly wrong that he’s forced to remove his own predictions page from his own website.

Failure #2: he failed to predict somebody like me would save a PDF copy of his predictions – just to amuse the world at his expense. (Note: It has since come to my attention that a copy of his predictions can still be found at that other loon site, prisonplanet.com)

I’ll let the good people at Skeptic Project handle the other failures, below.

Who is old enough to remember Y2K? I remember it well (translation: i’m old).

Y2K is an acronym for “Year 2000,” or, as it was also known – “The Year 2000 problem, the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, the Y2K bug, or simply Y2K.” (source) It was the moment when the clocks struck 12:00 AM on Janury 1, 2000 and how it might affect every aspect of our lives. Why?

The year 2000 was a problem for many computers because many computer programs stored years using only the last two digits of the year; for example, 1980 was stored as “80”, the year 1999 was stored as “99” and the year 2000 would be stored as “00”.

Do you see the problem? Not only did such systems view the year 2000 as “00”, but they also viewed the year 1900 as “00”. Imagine what would happen to half your programs if your computer suddenly thought the current year (2013) was actually the year 1913. Your calendar program, your watch, your smart phone and many other programs we rely on would suddenly be all wacked out. Imagine what would happen to the banking system if this glitch occurred. Would you be able to access your money? Would all your checks suddenly bounce? (On the other hand, maybe the banks would suddenly give us 100 years of accrued interest. But i digress …)

Now imagine if such a glitch were to occur in bigger systems like nuclear electric plants and nuclear weapons? What might go wrong? This is what had a lot of people in a near state of panic.

Would telephone systems shutdown? Would the electric grid turn off across the country – plunging all of us into darkness for an indeterminant amount of time? Would trains run on schedule? Would the air traffic control system lose control? Would our nuclear arsenal behave in some unpredicted manner and cause WWIII? Would the nuclear arsenal in some other country malfunction and bomb us?

It seemed nobody knew for sure what would – or would not – happen. People were concerned and scared.

Enter my favorite moron – Alex Jones.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, the night the clocks were due to change over to the year 2000, The Alex Jones show engaged in some of the most negligent, egregious and irresponsible scare mongering ever. I don’t know of a worse case than this.

In the 3 hours Jones was on the air, he made every conceivable claim of catastrophe imaginable. He took everything people were fearing about Y2K and he claimed those fears were materializing. Everything from cash machines failing, nuclear power plants shutting down, concentration camps (with shackles) being readied, empty grocery store shelves, gas stations out of gas, Martial Law declared, the military serving search warrants in 77 Texas counties – to an actual nuclear missile attack!!!!!!!!

And did any of this actually occur? No. None of it. People were so frightened they reportedly headed for the hills (literally) and got physically sick.

Bill Cooper’s original broadcast was 3 hours long. In the Alex Jones recording i present below, except for the opening 30 seconds, i have edited out all of Bill Cooper’s narratives so you can hear Alex Jones uninterrupted in all his despicable glory.

As i was going through the audio, i noticed breaks in the Alex Jones audio that i assume were done by Bill Cooper’s editing team in preparation for broadcast. Where ever i believed there was an edit i added a half-second “beep” sound. This is to help avoid confusion as the conversation would sometimes abruptly change topics. So listen for the beeps (you can’t miss them).

Below the audio you will find a complete transcript of notes i made of what to expect in the audio. This will help you follow along. Where ever you see the word “Regurgitation,” that is my own shorthand to indicate it is a previously mentioned point being repeated by Jones – a tactic he uses to give the impression he has a pile of information. Any words [inside brackets] are commentaries i made for myself.

Believe me, this is an audio clip Alex Jones wishes would go away.

Enjoy!

🙂

Mason I. Bilderberg.

P.S. If anybody knows where i can find a copy of the full 3 hour Alex Jones Show from 12/31/1999 please let me know.

1:39 Pennsylvania nuclear plant (Limerick Generating Station) has been shut down [implied because of Y2K-related problems. Not true. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) findings are contained in the image, below]

1:49 The shelves (In TX) are empty of water and gas stations are running out of fuel

3:12 The government in Washington D.C. has set up a $50M command bunker that is hooked into FEMA and they can take over all the shortwave (radio), AM/FM radio stations and all television and other broadcast stations

3:34 The police and military [presumably nationwide] are on high alert

3:41 The military are highly visible [presumably in the streets]

3:45 Trains of military equipment moving into Austin, TX

3:53 The airport (Robert Mueller Airport) will be used as a massive holding facility [ala concentration camps]

6:00 They (Russia) have deployed their missiles and submarines against us (America).

6:09 Vladimir Putin, who just took over as Russian President, has “taken the codes off” Russia’s nuclear arsenal. (The Russian nuclear arsenal no longer requires a secret code to initiate a nuclear missile attack on America.)

6:25 Discussing America being hit with a nuclear first-strike and the ensuing annihilation.

7:27 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania Electric Company (PECO), Limerick Generating Station (here and here) was shutdown [presumably because of Y2K-related problems. Not true. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) findings are contained in the image, below].

7:38 Doesn’t challenge a caller paraphrasing (Colonel) Bo Gritz who said, that Russia said, if their (Russia) power goes out they will blame us and they (Russia) would set off their nuclear arsenal.

8:01 The Russians are threatening to nuke us every, single week.

8:25 Currencies around the world are plunging

8:39 Gas stations in America are out of gas

8:58 American’s are standing up as Russia threatens to attack us with nuclear weapons

9:02 Nuclear power plants are being shutdown

9:07 The military is “running around” with the police and the FBI saying terrorism is imminent [the takeover is beginning]

9:25 “They” have activated a powerful, cold war, radar system in the north pole region [presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack] that is affecting shortwave (radio)

9:46 Military traffic is EVERYWHERE

9:52 Regurgitation: Super power, cold war radar systems (presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack) and nuclear systems are up.

10:07 Fresno (California?) is blacked out, he (Jones) is off the internet

10:25 [Scare tactic, Survivalist Commercial]

11:03 “America is under siege right now.”

11:14 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

11:33 Egypt is having a run on the banks

11:45 Regurgitation: The power in Fresno (California?) is down, he is off the internet

11:50 Regurgitation: Cash machines and ATMs in Europe are having problems

12:03 Martial Law signs are posted on highway 65 in Arkansas by the Arkansas Transportation Department

21:18 There are “shackles on the ground, concreted into the ground” at Robert Mueller Airport – like a slave galley.

21:42 New Zealand is having power outages

21:57 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

22:33 Regurgitation: Vladimir Putin threatens to nuke us

22:50 Regurgitation: Pennsylvania nuclear power plant shutdown

22:55 The power is off in 8 different areas across the country

22:58 A lot of cable systems aren’t working

23:01 Satellites are down

23:09 “Minor fault (???) struck two nuclear power plants in Japan just seconds after the clock ticked into 2000 …”

23:25 Anybody near a nuclear power plant should pack up and go someplace else.

23:37 The store shelves are bare in Austin, TX.

23:43 Regurgitation: Gas is running out.

23:44 They’re announcing on the news that, “if you’re bad they’re going to put you in a … they’re going to bolt you to a pipe coming out of the ground at the airport (Robert Mueller Airport) in some cold hangar.”

24:04 “The military is serving search warrants now in 77 Texas counties.”

24:08 Regurgitation: “We got nuclear power plants shutting down.”

24:20 Regurgitation: The Russians are threatening to nuke us RIGHT NOW.

28:36 Regurgitation: It’s on ABC news that 5 nuclear missiles have been launched.

28:57 The night before (12/30/99), anything and everything on the flight line at Selfridge Air National Guard Base was put into the air and was constantly in the air. [i.e. The U.S. is preparing for a nuclear attack]

29:11 Regurgitation: Super power, cold war radar systems [presumably to keep an eye out for a Russian ICBM attack] are turned on.

29:21 The Russians are not the only ones we need to be concerned about … we should worry about the Chinese too.

20:24 We also need to be worried about Germany.

29:58 Regurgitation: It’s on ABC news that 5 nuclear missiles have been launched.

For years and years everyone from science fiction writers to scientists have been talking about all of these scenarios and what not about how the world will end (be it by our own hands, or a random act of nature).

While I find many of these scenarios interesting, many of them have a common flaw: they don’t actually end the Earth, just human civilization, and perhaps the human species.

So, how exactly could the Earth REALLY be destroyed (as in cease to exist)?

Well I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come up with about 11 different ways of how it could happen.

So if you don’t mind possibly being scared to death, below are those 11 possible scenarios:

• Planetary impact

We all know the dangers that a direct impact from either a comet or meteor poses to the Earth as it has been the subject of several movies and books, and is a legitimate threat because it has happened before, and it has wiped out entire species and caused major damage to the Earth throughout our planet’s history.

While some people might believe that it would be the end of the world if a large meteor or comet was to hit us today, it wouldn’t be. It might be the end of human civilization, maybe even our species, but the world will still exist… unless something really big, or really heavy was to hit us…

Lets say something nearly the size of the Earth, or bigger, was to hit us, or something very heavy like a neutron star. The fact is that there would be no way for the Earth to survive an impact by something close to, or larger, or heavier than the Earth. Our world would be broken apart and probably turned into an asteroid field by such an impact.

A one mile wide meteor hitting the Earth would be devastating. If that one mile wide meteor was to hit the Earth while traveling nearly the speed of light, the amount of kinetic energy released from such an impact would rip the Earth apart, and we wouldn’t even know it until it actually happened (assuming we survived long enough) because such an object would most likely be impossible to find, let alone track.

A von Neumann machine is a type of robot first conceived of by John von Neumann (hence the name) that can basically self replicate, and could even manufacture materials on it’s own in order to do so. It would even be possible for it to seek out the resources it needs to manufacture those materials.

While such a machine would be an extraordinary leap forward in terms of robotics and manufacturing, some people fear that one day one of those robots could go haywire (or someone could build one for the purpose of unregulated self replicating) and continue to self replicate without knowing when to shut off, and ultimately end up destroying the Earth a small part at a time until there is nothing left.

While a larger machine might not actually be able to do this before we stopped it, a small machine like a nano-probe might just be able to do this.

• Knocked into the sun

Lets say a very large object (like a star) was to pass through our solar system, what do you think would happen?

The answer is that the Earth would be knocked out of orbit.

After that one of two things would then happen: The Earth would be knocked away from the sun and become a rogue planet (as well as a giant ball of ice), or we would get knocked into the sun and be burnt into nothing.

If you’ve ever seen Star Wars then you probably know what I’m talking about, if you don’t then I’ll explain (although I do still recommend seeing Star Wars).

A laser is a device that creates a focused beam of light that can actually be quiet destructive, and depending on how much energy you put into the laser, it’s destructive power can range from being harmless (unless you look directly into the beam) to being used to take out a vehicle. Taking this in mind it is theoretically possible to build a laser powerful to destroy the Earth.

Fortunately we don’t have to worry about this one right now due to the fact that the total amount of energy produced world wide is no where near enough to power a laser that would be capable of doing so.

For this article I’m throwing in a bit of a curveball from what you’ve come to expect from iLLumiNuTTi.

This article is not about proving or disproving conspiracies. Whether you or I believe the following conspiratorial claims to be true is irrelevant for the purposes of this article. For the sake of argument, just this once, let’s assume all the insanity is true.

Why? Because this article is going to use the beliefs espoused by the conspiracists themselves to point out a peculiar inconsistency between what conspiracists say and what conspiracists do.

The question to be answered is, “Are conspiracists all talk and no walk?”

Here we go . . .

The Fukushima Fallout Is Here And Is Killing Us

Distributed by conspiracists as proof of radioactive water emanating from Fukushima, this image actually had absolutely nothing to do with radiation.(click the image to find out more)

Conspiracists are screaming and yelling about the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima disaster. They are convinced the radioactive fallout has already reached the west coast and other parts of the United States and is killing us, and “they” (who ever “they” are) are covering up the situation.

The crank site Natural News[1] is telling us about “a multitude of strange animal deaths, high radiation readings and other recent anomalies” on the west coast.

Natural News[2] also tells us even the Alaskan coastline is seeing the effects of deadly radiation with a series of “strange animal deaths … including masses of sea lions, sockeye salmon and other sea creatures washing up on the shore,” and “polar bears, seals and walruses … found to have major fur loss and open sores…”

This picture posted by elitedaily.com[3] claims a nationwide increase in mortality rates since the Fukushima disaster:

The cranks at worldtruth.tv[4] are telling us the entire food supply is contaminated with radiation and recommends we avoid the following foods: seafood, water, dairy products, produce and meat.

Why aren’t conspiracists evacuating the west coast?

If conspiracists truly believed this rhetoric you would expect them to be doing something about it, wouldn’t you?

For example, do we see conspiracists packing up their belongings, getting in their cars and evacuating the west coast to save themselves from imminent doom?

What, exactly, are conspiracists doing in response to a crisis they want the rest of us to believe?

Nothing. They are doing absolutely nothing.

The Bush Family Did Business With The Nazis

Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), an investment bank that operated as a clearing house for many assets and enterprises held by German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. His involvement with UBC was purely commercial, he was not a Nazi sympathizer. (More)

The basic idea is, because the Bush family had business connections with Nazi Germany[5], we should not only hate the Bush family but the Nazi connection is all the proof needed to prove the Bush family are evil, ruthless people – able, willing, wanting and guilty of killing thousands of people on September 11. 2001.

What do you think? Do conspiracists call these companies evil? Do you think conspiracists refuse to work for any of these companies? Do conspiracists refuse to purchase or use products connected with these companies?

Of course not.

Conspiracists tell us to hate the Bush family because of their business connection to Nazi Germany. They say this as they climb into their Ford, GM, Volkswagen or BMW vehicle and drive away on a tank of gas supplied by one of Standard Oil’s successor companies. Once home, they kick off their Hugo Boss shoes, grab some Nestlé cookies (Mmmmmmm!) from their GE refrigerator and wash it all down with a can of Fanta orange soda.

Peace and love or Nazi deathmobile?

Afterwards they fight the matrix masters by posting conspiratorial crap on their blog using a DSL connection routed through an IBM server.

Then before turning in for the night they head on over to Amazon or Ebay and buy another round of conspiracy DVDs and books – published by Random House – using a Chase bank Visa card.

The next time a conspiracist mentions the Bush-Nazi connection, ask them what kind of car they drive.

Conspiracists believe that some trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public and directed by various government officials.[7]

Conspiracists believe the aircraft we see flying across the sky everyday are poisoning us with some kind of nanoparticle spray. Barium and aluminum seem to be the most common elements the conspiracists believe are raining down upon us.

What debilitating health effects do conspiracists believe are befalling us?

So what do you think? If you believed harmful nanoparticles are dropping from the sky causing every conceivable adverse health problem short of stripping the skin off your face, wouldn’t you take steps to protect yourself?

Of course you would.

In real life, to provide adequate protection against the chemicals and biological agents the conspiracists are talking about, a simple surgeon’s mask won’t suffice. You would have to squeeze yourself into a hazmat suit akin to what is depicted in the image to the right.

When is the last time you saw a chemtrail-believing conspiracist walking around in a hazmat suit? Never. Once again, conspiracists don’t behave in a manner consistent with their stated beliefs.

The next time a chemtrail believer screams about those death trails in the sky, comment on how hard it must be to type on a keyboard while wearing those big, bulky hazmat suit gloves.

Government Spying

Conspiracists are an extraodinarily paranoid bunch.

I read a blaring headline the other day, written by a conspiracist, claiming facebook is working hand-in-hand with the NSA to spy on our every move by turning over all our private data, pictures, videos, likes, dislikes, friends list, private messages . . . EVERYTHING! Even our shoe size.

“Where did you read this headline?”, you ask? On facebook – of course. This conspiracist has a facebook timeline brimming with every anti-government rant you could ever imagine. Am I the only one seeing the irony here?

Then there is the conspiracist who sent me an email imploring me to get angry about the NSA spying on our emails. When I pointed out to him that he should encrypt his own emails if his fear was real, he tells me encrypting his emails would just get him flagged by “them.” Excuse me for just a second but – *ahem* *clears throat* – WTF?

Another conspiracist friend refuses to join Facebook because he fears being flagged and tracked by “them.” Yet he runs a blog where he pontificates at great lengths detailing his very own brand of crazy. When I queried him on this seeming contradiction he gave me an explanation that I can honestly say I didn’t understand. It just didn’t make sense – whatever he said.

When a story comes out speculating on the ability of the government to use cell phones to track our movements. Do my conspiratorial friends rid themselves of their cell phones or, at a minimum, wrap their cell phones in foil to prevent the tracking of their phones? Of course not.

Televsions Are For Brainwashing and Mind Control

Conspiracists believe, “that television flicker rates induce alpha brain waves, lulling the brain into a more subconscious state that can be compared to sleep, literally inducing a type of hypnosis within the viewer that makes them more susceptible to suggestion”[10] and “whatever is coming from the TV therefore somewhat bypasses the logical mind and is embedded directly into the subconscious.”[11]

In other words, “they” are using televisions as a “psycho-social weapon[12]” to control our minds and turn us into New World Order (NWO) zombies, instilling us with “a social worldview and value system that is self-centric and is in fact the opposite of what a healthy and enduring society requires.[13]”

Here is my question: If television really is a tool to brainwash and control the mind, wouldn’t the viewing of conspiracy documentaries on a television also have the same mind controlling and brainwashing effect on every conspiracist?

Why don’t conspiracists accuse the makers of their wack-a-doo conspiracy DVDs of brainwashing?

If conspiracists sincerely believed their own hype, they would cease watching all television programs regardless of the content. But they don’t and they won’t.

I think you get the idea.

In order to take a conspiracist to task you needn’t know what they know to counter their arguments, you need only ask them, “What are you doing about your claimed belief?”

I ask this very question of Alex Jones regarding chemtrails. Of all the conspiracists who have the resources to settle the chemtrail debate once and for all, it’s Alex Jones. If Alex Jones really believes “they” have been spraying us for almost 20 years, why doesn’t Alex reach into his own wallet and pull out some of that $$$$$ he earns from DVD sales and rent a plane, pay a pilot, hire a certified forensics lab, fly into the suspicious clouds and contrails, conduct all the necessary air sampling while following all proper chain of custody procedures and end this debate once and for all? Why? Because it would kill those DVD sales.

It’s been almost a year since 12/21/2012, the day that the world was suppose to end… or change (depends on who you asked).

Now there was a lot that didn’t happen that day that was suppose to, and there were certain things that day that did happen, just not what some people were expecting.

I’ve looked back upon what did happen that day, and I’ve come up with the five different things that I’ve noticed about that day and the whole doomsday prediction itself.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about 12/21/2012:

5. Nothing really important happen that day.

Well… not necessarily nothing per say, but in terms of the world shattering event that was suppose to occur (at least according to some people who mistook the ending of the Mayan calendar as being a Mayan prophecyforetelling the end of the world) nothing happened that day that was even worth bothering to remember.

The only thing that I really remember from that day is that me and several fellow skeptics laughed at all of those people who seriously thought the world was going to end that day, and the History Channel showing a bunch of programs about doomsday (because that is what the History Channel does).

Basically that’s all that happened that day. Skeptics had a good laugh, the History Channel showed a bunch of BS (well a little bit more BS than usual) and that’s it… well, that and fact that…

4. Millions of Doomers realized how stupid they were.

The amount of people who thought the world was going to end that day (or atleast something big was going to happen that day) was probably in the millions, most of which I’m pretty sure were relived that nothing happen (although I’m sure a few were disappointed, especially those who thought it would bring about some kind of human “transformation”).

I say again that while I am pretty sure that most people who believed that the world would end that day were relived that it didn’t happen, I’m also pretty sure that a lot of those people felt stupid for trusting some non-prophesy that a few people who were allegedly smarter than them completely mis-interpreted and got it into the public mindset in such a way that it ended up taking off like wildfire…

Ofcourse what probably made a lot of people feel stupid for believing in the 12/21/2012 end of the world prediction is the realization that…

3. It’s not the first time a major doomsday prediction has fail.

The 12/21/2012 was not the first major doomsday prediction to fail, nor was it the first major one to create a kind of mass hysteria that caused people to waste their time and money on to prepare for, as well as possibly ruin relationships with the people in their lives. The 12/21/2012 prediction wasn’t even the first major doomsday prediction of the century that failed. Infact it was the third major doomsday prediction of the 21st century that failed (the first one was the Y2K prediction, and the second one was Harold Camping‘s Rapture prediction of 2011).

Now I went to the Wikipedia page listing doomsday predictions (and these are just some of the more famous ones) and there were huge amount of them, and obviously they’ve all failed to come true. Infact I actually counted the number of doomsday predictions between the time I was born and the 12/21/2012 prediction, and according to the list the world should have ended atleast 47 times since my birth…

Now in my opinion the whole 12/21/2012 should never have been taken seriously in the first place. This is not only due to the sheer fact that doomsday predictions always fail, it’s also due to the fact that…

Another day brings another science-free but hysteria-packed screed of terror about how radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant incident will bathe all of us in torrents of cesium-soaked death. A few months ago, I took on one of these rambles, Gary Stamper’s not at all melodramatic “At the very least, your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over” and determined that nothing of the sort is even close to true, with the evidence behind it either willfully misinterpreted or simply incorrect.

Now it’s time to get the knives out for a newer piece of Fukushima scaremongering, published just over a week ago on “Activist Post.” While it’s just as wrong and hysterical as Stamper’s piece, it’s also just as popular, with 28,000 shares on Facebook already. It’s sad that far more people are drawn in by crap than in the debunking of said crap, but that doesn’t mean we stop spreading the correct message: that the radiation released by Fukushima, while serious enough to be cleaned up and monitored, is having a negligible effect on everyone but the unfortunate people living in that area.

28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima

And we’re off to the races: specifically, the Gish Gallop, a fallacious debating technique that involves overwhelming your opponent with information, without any regard for its accuracy. Also, I’d like to know what “absolutely fried” means. Is it measurable? Is there a unit that denotes “absolutely fried” as opposed to “mostly fried” or “somewhat fried?” How many AF’s (absolutely frieds) does the radiation from Fukushima contain? And what’s a survivable dose of AF’s? I have many questions about the science underlying this clearly scientific measuring tool.

Michael Snyder
Activist Post

According to his blurb on Activist Post, Michael Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth. His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

Snyder’s site appears to be some kind of Christian doomsday prepper clearinghouse, and his novel is about (surprise) the economic collapse of America. So if you’re looking for a way to incorporate hoarding precious metals into your fellowshipping, Snyder is your man. None of this is a knock against him, but he does seem to have a vested interest in trying to convince you the world is about to end. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

The map below comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States.

The name “Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center” sounds a lot like a government regulatory body. It’s so incredibly the opposite of that. The website is a slapped together map of the supposed radiation levels at nuclear sites around the world. It’s got no indication where it’s getting its information or what it means, but it does have a fee based service that will alert you to radiation spikes anywhere in the world. And Bible quotes.

Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean. That means that the total amount of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain.

I already covered this in the Stamper piece, and why it seems much worse than it actually is. The short of it is that 300 tons of radioactive water is literally a drop in the bucket compared to the 187 quintillion gallons that make up the Pacific Ocean. Whatever radioactivity is in that water will be diluted to the point of harmlessness.

[…]
We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse.

1. Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from fur loss and open sores…

Stamper referenced the same article that Snyder does. And if I may be so bold as to quote myself: “The article Stamper links to specifically says ‘Reuters noted that preliminary studies do not support a theory that the disease is due to contamination from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.‘”

Citing an article that specifically refutes the point you’re trying to make is not the way to make that point.

2. There is an epidemic of sea lion deaths along the California coastline…

There is an epidemic of sea lion deaths along the west coast, happening for as-yet unknown reasons. But it’s sea lion PUPS dying, not sea lions as a whole. Radiation does not distinguish whether an animal is young or old, so it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, that Fukushima has anything to do with this.

3. Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at a historic low. Many are blaming Fukushima.

Sockeye salmon numbers have been in decline for decades.[/caption]And they would be wrong. Sockeye salmon stocks are low in Canada’s Fraser Basin, with experts in the field researching a number of causes for it. But it’s a decline that began in 1992, long before Fukushima was scaring the crap out of people.

4. Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

Just as “many” does not equal “people who understand this stuff,” “something” does not equal “Fukushima.” The link Snyder sites doesn’t even talk about “fish all along the west coast of Canada.” It mentions one school of herring found to be mysteriously bleeding. The cause of this is unknown right now, but even the biologist who discovered the herring isn’t blaming Fukushima – and she discovered them before the plume of radiation would have reached Canada.

5. A vast field of radioactive debris from Fukushima that is approximately the size of California has crossed the Pacific Ocean and is starting to collide with the west coast.

I don’t know where the “size of California” bit comes from, and I can’t find any reputable source to back it up. There is a large field of debris from the post-earthquake tsunami that will hit the west coast, but interestingly, the link Snyder cites has another link to a BBC article that says it won’t happen until March, 2014. And the debris is not likely to have anything more than traces of radioactivity.

6. It is being projected that the radioactivity of coastal waters off the U.S. west coast could double over the next five to six years.

True, and nothing to be concerned about, given how low the current radioactivity level of the west coast is. To quote Dr. Claus Boning from the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany: “The levels of radiation that hit the US coast will be small relative to the levels released by Fukushima. […] But we cannot estimate accurately what those levels will be because we do not know for certain what was released by Fukushima.”

7. Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.

This is entirely expected and in keeping with a radioactive leak. The amount of radioactivity in the plankton will continue to decay as it moves up the food chain, staying well within Japan’s newly-raised acceptable levels of becquerels per kilogram of foodstuffs.

8. One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.

Yet another link Snyder cited without actually reading. It references a CNN article that states: “Tissue samples taken from 15 bluefin caught in August, five months after the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, all contained reactor byproducts cesium-134 and cesium-137 at levels that produced radiation about 3% higher than natural background sources.” (Emphasis mine)

A 3% increase in radiation is negligible. It’s around the same amount of additional exposure you get flying in a plane, or sleeping next to someone. If that worries you, then it’s time for separate bedrooms.

And yet, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl points out, millions of Americans hold these beliefs. In a Zogby poll taken six years ago, only 64 percent of U.S. adults agreed that the attacks “caught US intelligence and military forces off guard.” More than 30 percent chose a different conclusion: that “certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives,” or that these government elements “actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks.”

How can this be? How can so many people, in the name of skepticism, promote so many absurdities?

The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.

Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking.

So i was having a written exchange with a couple of conspiracists. They were posting links ranting on and on about FEMA camps, martial law, something about foreign troops being trained to disarm Americans . . . yada, yada, yada.

You know, the same old crap.

This whole conspiracy thing seems cyclical. A new generation of conspiracy theorists stumble upon the same old, worn out, decades old conspiracy theories for the first time in their paranoid lives and they think they’ve discovered something completely new, true and worth preaching. And so they begin their new mission – running around trying to wake up the “sheeple” to their new found “truth.”

These newly stamped conspiracists then go on to spend many years spinning their wheels in the same conspiratorial muck that their conspiratorial predecessors did all those decades before.

Some of these newbies will remain in the Lost Forest for many years – beyond the reach of reason. Then there are the newbies that wise up to the con(spiracy) money game being played on them by those reaping huge profits regurgitating the same old tales of paranoia – Alex Jones comes to mind.

Every conspiracy being preached today has been preached before in some shape or form. This is the point i try to make in my exchanges with my conspiratorial friends:

How urgent can your message be today if it’s the same “urgent” message that has been screamed for (at least) the last 15 years?

Can you continuously scream “FIRE!” for decades and be taken seriously when the fire has never materialized?

As an example of what i’m talking about i have posted some screenshots below that came from the InfoWars website, October 1999. Note the similarities to today’s InfoWar headlines. Same sh**, different year.

I’ll give Alex Jones credit for one thing – he has an amazing ability to sell and resell the same crap over and over again.

These are the kinds of links i get on my facebook page.The video description says, “Martial law ALERT This may be your final warning.” Really? Alex Jones has been giving us “final warnings” since (at least) 1999 (see below).

It’s happened to all of us. Some friend we had in elementary school or from an old job is all of a sudden making super weird comments on Facebook, or you’re in a bar and some random is trying to talk to you about fluoride for some reason. It’s not always immediately clear. Like, I realized one day that people saying crazy things were always following it up with “Do your own research!” and then finally discovered that it was sort of a “buzzphrase” for conspiracy theorists.

So, I thought I’d compile a list of the ways to know that someone in your life is starting to head down to tin foil hat alley.

1 • Says insane thing (probably about chemtrails), and if you dispute, insists that you “Do your own research!”

This is one of the earliest signs of this type of crazy- and it’s also a major Glenn Beck-ism. I don’t know about you, but when I state a fact, I’m usually able to explain that fact. Especially if it’s something that may be controversial.

For instance, I do not so much believe that Joan Crawford beat her children. This is a thing that most people believe, because of the movie “Mommie Dearest”– however, when asked to explain, I don’t yell “Do your own research!” at people, I explain that all of the other children (save for Christopher) have refuted Christina’s book, as well as Crawford’s actual personal assistant, and Myrna Loy, and pretty much anyone else who was around during that time. I’m not saying I’m 100% definitely correct on this, but I err on the side of “probably not.”

Still, I don’t throw out something weird, get mad at people for not immediately taking me at my word, and then yell at them to do their own research. I mean, if they want to, that’s fine, but I’m usually quite able to support my arguments.

2 • Freaking Flouride

UGH. These people and their fluoride. They love to make up crap about how the government puts fluoride in the water to keep us dumb and rebellion-resistant, like no one has ever seen “Dr. Strangelove” before or something. This is usually what they start with, probably because it sounds slightly more realistic than like, Lizard People.

It is not, however, true. At all. And yes, I’ve “done my research.” But don’t tell that to these people, especially if they are drunk at a bar, because they will, in fact, start screaming at you about it. Fluoride and the “vaccinations cause autism” thing are like the gateway drugs into tin-foil hat land.

3 • Rejecting the tyranny of paragraph breaks

I swear to god, this is a thing. Whenever I see a comment that’s just a giant block of text with no breaks in it, I immediately just go “Welp, this one’s gonna be crazy” and I am pretty much always right. I don’t know why this is a thing, it just is.

4 • When a person who you already kinda know isn’t too swift starts trying to pretend that they are some kind of intellectual who is totally going to school you on “how things are in the world.”

I hate to say this, but it’s true. It’s always the dumb ones. I feel bad, because like, they’re usually just coming across this stuff for the first time and it is totally blowing their minds. Like, I already know that some people think that the Rothschilds control the world and that there are Mason things on the dollar bill and also THE MOON LANDING WAS FAKED or whatever. I’ve known for years, and I’ve already figured out that it’s all bullshit.

The more you read about history, the more you realize that people are so not getting it together to form a whole “New World Order” anytime soon. While there have been “conspiracy” type things throughout history (MKUltra, Tuskeegee, Project Paperclip, the COINTELPRO that actually existed and not the one people pretend still exists), they have been discovered fairly quickly. Because someone always has a big mouth.

5 • They use the term term Big Pharma (or Big Anything) in all seriousness

There are about a 1000 problems with the pharmaceutical industry, for sure. However, when your friend is talking about “Big Pharma” they are not usually talking so much about overpriced cancer medication as they are like, vaccines causing autism and things like that. Also, sane people, when discussing the problems with the pharmaceutical industry just do not say things like “Big Pharma” because they like being taken seriously.

Being awake or being asleep is like, tin-foil hat code for being hep to all kinds of nonsense. Which is why on those weird personal ads for Infowars everyone was like “I’ve been awake for 4 months” and things. Sheeple is what they call people who do not go along with them.

See, usually, these people are kind of “new.” Like, they think that the information they are about to rock you with is A) Nothing you have ever heard before or B) Something you are going to buy wholesale, immediately, because their “evidence” is so vastly compelling. If you do not believe them, you are obviously a sheep of a person.

Yes, some people fear the day the north and south poles shift their positions or even reverse positions. They believe such a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field will result in earthquakes, tsunamis, global climatic change and eventually the destruction of our planet.

(As a side note: Are there ANY conspiracy theories out there that DON’T end with everybody being annihilated or the planet being destroyed? Just asking. I’m beginning to suspect there is a conspiracy to NOT have any conspiracies with a happy ending. But i digress . . . :))

The following article explains the regularity of pole shifting. Apparently, the poles have only been shifting every hour of everyday for a gazillion years. The north and south poles have even swapped positions 400 times in the last 330,000,000 years.

Click for larger view.In the last 150 years, the pole has wandered a total of about 685 miles (1102 kilometers).Image courtesy Kenai National Wildlife

The Earth has several poles, not just two. It has geographic north and south poles, which are the points that mark the Earth’s axis of rotation. It also has magnetic north and south poles, based on the planet’s magnetic field. When you use a compass, it points to the magnetic north pole, not the geographic North Pole.

The Earth’s magnetic poles move. The magnetic North Pole moves in loops of up to 50 miles (80 km) per day. But its actual location, an average of all these loops, is also moving at around 25 miles a year [ref]. In the last 150 years, the pole has wandered a total of about 685 miles (1102 kilometers). The magnetic South Pole moves in a similar fashion.

The poles can also switch places. Scientists can study when this has happened by examining rocks on the ocean floor that retain traces of the field, similar to a recording on a magnetic tape. The last time the poles switched was 780,000 years ago, and it’s happened about 400 times in 330 million years. Each reversal takes a thousand years or so to complete, and it takes longer for the shift to take effect at the equator than at the poles. The field has weakened about 10% in the last 150 years. Some scientists think this is a sign of a flip in progress.

The Earth’s physical structure is behind all this magnetic shifting. The planet’s inner core is made of solid iron. Surrounding the inner core is a molten outer core. The next layer out, the mantle, is solid but malleable, like plastic. Finally, the layer we see every day is called the crust.

The Earth itself spins on its axis. The inner core spins as well, and it spins at a different rate than the outer core. This creates a dynamo effect, or convections and currents within the core. This is what creates the Earth’s magnetic field — it’s like a giant electromagnet.

Bank runs in February 2009. 9/11-scale terror attacks in 2010. 50% of the U.S. population will be killed in a bio-weapons attack in 2009. 16 year-old soldiers will enforce nationwide martial law by 2012. A major terror attack will occur in the U.S. by the end of summer 2009 (oh, and it’s a false flag). The U.S. will go to war with Russia in 2009. Texas stores are being looted and National Guard troops are moving into Austin right this minute (December 31, 1999). The UN will announce the presence of ET intelligence during 2009 to stage a NWO takeover. The U.S. dollar will be devalued by 50% by 2012.

If you’re Alex Jones, you’re used to being wrong. But that doesn’t stop his wild-eyed fans from listening – there’s always another edge-of-your-seat, apocalyptic prediction coming down the pipeline, after all. In this highly entertaining mash-up, Alex Jones Clips runs down 45 of the most wild, failed Alex Jones predictions.

For decades conspiracy theorists have accused the government of hiding evidence of aliens or imminent world disasters, but could the governments of the world actually be planning to fake an apocalypse? Tune in to learn more about Project Blue Beam.

With Pluto’s recent demotion from the ranks of proper planets, the slippery definition of what is or is not a planet has revived several astronomical conspiracy theories. Learn about the most bizarre conspiracies surrounding Planet X in this episode.

Do you know why the Washington DC Navy Yard shootings occurred? Because a false flag plot by Obama to detonate a nuclear bomb – on the anniversary of 9/11 – was uncovered by the U.S. military’s criminal investigation units and the shooting somehow thwarted Obama’s false flag nuclear plans.

Does this make sense to you? Me either. I think somebody’s tin foil hat is on their head just a wee bit too tight.

Have another round of popcorn – this time with nuts – and enjoy the crazy … 🙂

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt. U.S. military police were targeted and killed by Obama in the Washington DC Navy Yard shooting. Why? Agents from the U.S. military’s criminal investigation units had uncovered a plot to detonate a nuclear device in the heart of the nation’s capitol as part of an Obama government false flag. Officials from NCIS (United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service) and the U.S. Office of the Provost (both with field offices inside the Washington DC Navy Yard) had threatened to arrest Obama for planning to attacked Syria without Congressional approval following a planned nuclear detonation false flag in Washington DC. The Office of the Provost is on the second floor of Building 34, One First Avenue, Charlestown Navy Yard and NCIS is located at 716 SICARD STREET SE, SUITE 2000, WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, DC.

The United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is the primary law enforcement agency of the United States Department of the Navy. It investigates activities concerning crimes against or by United States Navy and United States Marine Corps personnel, along with national security, counter-intelligence, and counter-terrorism cases. A false flag is the crime of treason – levying war against the United States. If United States Navy or United States Marine Corps personnel are involved in planning for and preparing a false flag event in Washington DC or anywhere else in the United States, NCIS and its agents are duty bound to investigate and take action to counter those terrorist acts against the United States.

Prior to the Washington DC Navy Yard shooting the Joint Chief of Staff and Provost Marshals were planning and preparing to arrest Obama for treason. For levying war against the United States with a planned false flag in Washington DC on the anniversary of 9/11 – a nuclear detonation.

In the United States the Office of the Provost has the authority to arrest the President if he or she violates the terms of his/her employment, or commits an act that is detrimental to the United States. He/she can be held liable, arrested, imprisoned etc., depending on the depth of the violation, by the Provost Marshal.

If it has been determined that the president of the United States has committed treason in a manner unmistakable to all, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff convenes a covert meeting . . .

I’m sure everyone has heard about them and the groups that they form around them and their “teachings”. I’m also sure you’re aware of how they act…

Well anyways, I’ve been examining cult leaders for a long time, and people who act like cult leaders as well. During my observations I’ve notice certain traits that most of them have, and from that I’ve come up with five things they all tend to share.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about cult leaders:

5. They’re narcissistic.

If you were to ever meet the leader of a cult they will tell you that all of their teaching are for you to help better your life, and on the surface that sounds great… except this is a lie.

In reality it is all about the leader of the cult, and the power that leader has over you and the members of that cult.

Charles Manson “was pathologically deluded into believing that he was harbinger of doom regarding the planet’s future.” (source)

The leader doesn’t actually care about you, they only care bout what you can do for them, and how much you respect (or fear) them.

And as for their teachings? Well, just remember this is something that THEY created, and therefore can change at any time they want to (which most do) to suit whatever needs that they have, and they do this while telling you it’s for your own good.

4. They like to surround themselves with important people.

Because of a cult leader’s narcissism and their need to feel important, and also feel the need to gain influence (as well as new members), they tend to try also try to surround themselves with people who are either important, or they feel are important. This of course could be politicians, community leaders, celebrities, Playboy models (which I can’t really blame them for), and especially people who are rich.

They do this because not only does it help them get new members (via influence of the important person), they also do this because they feel it gives them a kind of bubble of protection (which does work sometimes).

Now, if they can’t actually get important people into their cult, then they’ll do the next best thing: make members of their cult important and rich (as this helps get them more money).

3. They try to destroy their critics.

Probably one of the most well known and enduring practices that L. Ron Hubbard created for his Church of Scientology was the Fair Game policy, which is basically guidelines on how to destroy a critic of Scientology using whatever means necessary to silence that critic. This policy is still used today (although some in the cult claim it isn’t), but it is far less effective than it was years ago as most people are no longer afraid of the Church of Scientology.

L. Ron Hubbard isn’t the only cult leader whom did this, or something similar to this. In fact many, if not all cult leaders do this, mostly because they see their critics as their enemies (although this might not be to far off in some cases, it’s usually for good reason).

While most have a direct hand in their handling of critics, most of the time they aren’t the one whom actually handle their critics. In fact the actual handling of their critics is done by other followers, they just give out the orders on whom they feel should be targeted, and how, and this is because…

While I did point out some basic differences between the two, I didn’t really go into to much detail into what those differences really are.

Here I have put together a list of things that conspiracy theorists tend to do that sets them apart from conspiracy believers:

Terminology

Conspiracy theorists has certain words that they tend to use and is quite common for them to use in a conversation (or argument). Some of the more common words used are shill, sheeple, blue pill, red pill, and dis-info agent.

There are of course more then just that, but if you hang around enough conspiracy theorist websites (or get into an argument with a conspiracy theorist on Youtube) you’ll learn more of them.

Creating conspiracy theories

One of the primary things that set conspiracy theorists apart from conspiracy believers is that conspiracy theorists actually create conspiracy theories.

Many of these conspiracy theories tend to be either expanding on a already established conspiracy theory, or a conspiracy thats directed at them. Of course, sometimes conspiracy theorists create entirely new conspiracy theories as well.

Emotional Reactions

While conspiracy believers might not become to emotional when discussing a conspiracy theory that they believe in, many conspiracy theorists on the other hand tend to become emotional when they discuss a conspiracy theory they believe. The levels of emotional reactions varies depending on how important the conspiracy theory is to that person, how much they believe the alledged conspiracy affects them, and if the person they are discussing the conspiracy theory with believes them or not.

There’s been a lot of doomsday predictions and prophecies over the years (and I mean a lot), and fortunately none of them have ever come true. While I have noticed a lot of things about them, there are five things that I have really noticed about them that tends to stick out.

Every single doomsday prophecy and prediction ever made has always failed to come true, including the big ones that a lot of people believed would happen and were actually preparing for. The most recent example of this is 12/21/2012 ending of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, which many people thought would mark the end of the world, despite the fact that nothing in any Mayan religious texts ever stated this, and even if there was, it wouldn’t have meant that the world was ending anyways…

Thinking about, it’s actually a pretty good thing that these doomsday prophecies and predictions has such a bad track record…

4. They tend to get pushed back.

While sometimes when a doomsday prediction fails it will go away, more often then not they just get pushed back to a later date, or will inspire someone else to make a similar prediction for a later date.

One of the most common types of doomsday predictions to this are the New World Order type of predictions. These are predictions that proclaim that the imaginary “New World Order” is going to take over the world and kill lots of people in the process. These types of predictions have failed every single time to come true, and have been pushed back so many times I can’t even count how many times now, and that’s just from Alex Jones alone…

3. They’re pretty vague.

Most of these doomsday predictions and prophecies are quite vague and often times lack many details, if any.

While some of these predictions will at least say what type of disaster is suppose to occur, sometimes they don’t even do that. This causes people to add in their own details about what is suppose to happen, which often times gets very… strange.

Doomsday Preppers is a popular show on the National Geographic Channel that profiles people that are preparing for what they believe is going to be a major disaster that will lead to the end of civilization as we know it. Most of the people on that show tend to have many common traits amongst them.

Here are five things I’ve about people on the show Doomsday Preppers:

5. They love guns

Almost everyone on that show seems to own several guns (and lots of ammo too), usually ranging from hand guns to semi-automatic assault rifles. Even the ones that don’t own any guns still tend own other types of weapons, and even make their own weapons as well.

4. They are very disaster specific

Almost every prepper on that show not only believes that some world altering disaster is going to happen, but they are also very certain what type of disaster will be, many of which (but not all) tend to be highly improbable. Because they are so disaster specific, whatever supplies they get tend to be what they believe will allow them to survive that disaster that they believe will happen, while ignoring the fact that if a different type of disaster were to occur, their prepping efforts might not save them.

3. They almost seem to want Doomsday to occur

Not only do these people believe that a disaster is going to occur, many of them act like they want it to occur! Some of them even even toast what they believe is the coming Apocalypse!

There are probably a couple reasons why they want the Apocalypse to occur: One, they don’t want everything they have been working for and what they have believed in for so long to have been a waste, and two, they want to rebuild the world.

Is the next Pope the last before the apocalypse? Some writings, though discredited, would suggest yes. Regardless of validity, doomsday predictions abound, including end-of-world dates set for 2020, 2040, 2060 and 2080.CREDIT: sdecoret | Shutterstock

Y2K? A bust. Judgment Day 2011? As quiet as a mouse. The Mayan apocalypse? Certainly not now.

Plenty, as it turns out. Previous failures have in no way shut down doomsday predictors, and dates are set for possible apocalypses in 2020, 2040, 2060 and 2080 (zeros have an appeal, apparently). One of these doomsdays was even predicted by Sir Isaac Newton himself.

“It’s clear that these kinds of scenarios return over and over and over again,” said John Hoopes, an archaeologist at the University of Kansas who has studied doomsday predictions.

The end is nigh

Doomsday prophecies date back thousands of years. The ancient Persians kicked off the hobby of apocalypse predicting in the Western world, Saint Joseph’s University professor Allen Kerkeslager told LiveScience in December 2012. When the Zoroastrian Persians conquered the ancient Jews, they passed their end-of-the-world beliefs into Jewish culture, which subsequently handed them to Christianity. Now, everyone from Protestant preachers like Harold Camping, who predicted Armageddon in 2011, to UFO cultists and New Age mystics occasionally jump on the doomsday train.

The most recent apocalypse prediction was tied to the Mayan calendar, even though actual Mayans and scholars who study ancient Maya culture pointed out repeatedly that the calendar was never meant to predict the end of the world. The appointed day (Dec. 21, 2012) came and went without fire and brimstone.

But failures haven’t stopped aspiring doomsday prophets in the past. In one of the most notorious apocalypse failures ever, American Baptist preacher William Miller predicted the return of Jesus Christ on March 21, 1844. Nothing happened, so Miller and his followers revised the prediction to Oct. 22. When that day, too, passed without incident, it was dubbed the Great Disappointment. [Oops! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions]

Likewise, Camping predicted the Rapture three times in 1994 before his 2011 predictions.

The Pope’s doomsday

So it should come as no surprise that doomsday believers have plenty of dates to fixate on in the future. Friday’s ultimately harmless asteroid flyby may trigger more anxiety about world-ending asteroid impacts in the near future, Hoopes told LiveScience. A Friday morning meteor explosion that shattered windows and injured more than 1,000 in Russia is likely to do the same.

Recently i was sent an email by a conspiracist type asking me how some military exercises conducted during the spring and summer of 2012 weren’t undeniably clear indications of a coming declaration of martial law.

I decided to investigate. To get you up to speed, here are two examples of what he was talking about.

In response to the Minneapolis exercise, again like Pavlov’s dog, Alex Jones’ InfoWars set off the alarm bells:

«Black Hawk military helicopters are flying low over Minneapolis this week as part of an exercise being overseen by the U.S. Special Operations Command, increasing concerns that Americans are being prepared for a state of martial law.

[…]

«As we have previously highlighted, unannounced urban warfare operations of this kind are being used to condition the public into accepting a future declaration of martial law.»

Now to answer my conspiracist’s question, i decided to take a different tact than he expected. He expected me to tackle every example of a military exercise he can throw at me. In conspiratorial circles, trying to overwhelm naysayers with a flood of questions and data is a common tactic called proof by verbosity:

«Proof by verbosity, sometimes colloquially referred to as argumentum verbosum – a rhetorical technique that tries to persuade by overwhelming those considering an argument with such a volume of material that the argument sounds plausible, superficially appears to be well-researched, and it is so laborious to untangle and check supporting facts that the argument might be allowed to slide by unchallenged.»

So if you want to become a conspiracist, be sure to master the art of cut-and-paste. You’ll win every time.

To the conspiracists’ mind, if you can’t answer every one of their million questions or if you just can’t be bothered responding to every anomaly they’ve found in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, your lack of response validates their delusions. This is called argument from ignorance:

«Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or “appeal to ignorance” (where “ignorance” stands for: “lack of evidence to the contrary”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is “generally accepted” (or vice versa).»

In other words, if you don’t know the sum of “2 + 2”, the conspiracist believes he is free to declare the correct answer is “666”! Illuminati!!!!

I decided the best way to tackle his question was to turn the tables on him. I have found one of the best ways to combat a conspiracy theory is to pit it against a competing conspiracy theory. This forces the conspiracy theorist to explain to ME why their theory is more valid than the competing theory.

As an example, in my video “9/11: Were Explosives Used?” i show buildings collapsing in identical fashion as the World Trade Centers on 9/11, except the buildings in my video are collapsed without using explosives. This puts the 9/11 truthers in the awkward position of defending their belief that explosives were used on 9/11 in lieu of the method used in my video. Awwwwwwwkward.

When a truther wants to discuss the aircraft used on 9/11, point out the other two, competing theories: no planes were used on 9/11 and drones were used on 9/11. Then ask him why these other competing theores are invalid. Sit back with a bucket of popcorn and watch the brain freeze.

Back to the military exercises during the spring and summer of 2012 …

The first thing i asked myself is, has this ever happend before? The conspiracists played up the significance of these exercises as unique, unusual and shocking and therefore evidence of something panic worthy. So i figured i’d research the history of such exercises. As it turns out, these exercises in April and August weren’t the first exercises of this nature:

• In February – World Net Daily – Kingsville, Texas:

«Some residents said they were terrified when helicopters swooped into town from the Army Special Operations Command, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, last Monday night.
[…]
«At least eight helicopters are reported to have participated in an assault exercise using live ammunition and explosives very close to innocent bystanders who were not warned of the planned action.
[…]
«The Army Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, has acknowledged that the event was the kick-off of a series of similar training operations going on in Kingsville, Corpus Christi and Fort Sam Houston, but would not confirm that the group was the Knight Stalkers. Additional training events have been confirmed in the area. »

• In March – The Anniston Star – Oxford, Alabama:

«Friday evening the Williams family sat down in their Oxford living room and popped a movie into the VCR. Then the power went off — a total blackout in all the neighborhoods surrounding the Anniston Municipal Airport in Oxford — and what sounded like a war began outside.
[…]
«Residents near the airport heard what sounded like machine gun fire, saw the fiery-red flash of explosions, and saw silhouettes of what looked like paratroopers dropping out of the darkened skies.
[…]
«The “invasion” was part of a special training operation conducted in Anniston, at Fort McClellan and at the airport in Oxford from Tuesday until the wee hours of Saturday morning.
[…]
«She said the Army does exercises like this “to give the rangers, Air Force special operations and the 160th opportunities to experience training in new and different environments. It adds to the realism of the exercise as real-world missions are in environments unfamiliar to our soldiers.” »

• In May – Richmond, Virginia TIMES-DISPATCH:

«A planned Marine Corps training exercise in Richmond has some Virginians worried about secretive encroachments on civil liberties, accident hazards, and misguided use of the American military. The urban maneuvers, these worried citizens say, may mask preparations for a Year 2000 computer meltdown so great that governments are afraid to discuss it, or plans to confiscate firearms, or the groundwork for a presidential power grab.
[…]
«The Marines and governments that have worked with the service on other exercises say the Marines are just getting ready to deal with crises that take them into increasingly dangerous urban areas overseas. . . .
[…]
«The bottom line, the Marines’ White said, “is we’re doing this training to save lives, the lives of our Marines. “The allegation that we’re doing anything other than that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”»

See? These kinds of military operations have happened before. But wait! There’s a catch! These three additional military operations – ALL OCCURRED IN 1999!!![a][b][c]

Let The 1999 Alarmism Begin!!!

Just like today, the conspiracists’ reaction to these 1999 military exercises was the same old, tired, over-hyped, alarmist rhetoric from the usual crazies at InfoWars:

As you may have noticed, last December was not the last month of life on Earth, nor was there some great transformation or spiritual awakening. We still have politicians, right? So I had my fun pointing this out on the alleged moment the end was supposed to come.

Now it has been nearly a month since the lack-of-doom date, and usually there are excuses for why the end did not happen. So I tried to look around the Internet, especially at the recognized websites that promoted the 2012 Apocalypse, such as December212012, 2012Apocalypse.net, and 2012Apocalypse.info. It looks like there is no updates at all since the winter solstice, at least as of now when I am writing this. My searches on Google also didn’t come up with anything much, though there may be something buried in some forum somewhere.

Alex Jones is trying to warn us about an evil syndicate of bankers who control most of the world’s governments and stand poised to unite the planet under their totalitarian reign, a “New World Order.” While we might be tempted to dismiss Jones as a nut, the “king of conspiracy” is a popular radio show host. The part-time filmmaker’s latest movie, The Obama Deception, in which he argues that Obama is a puppet of the criminal bankers, has been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

When we spoke, Jones ranted for two hours about FEMA concentration camps, Halliburton child kidnappers, government eugenics programs—and more. When I stopped him to ask for evidence the government is practicing eugenics, he pointed to a national security memorandum. But I found the document to be a bland policy report.

Jones “cherry picks not just facts but phrases, which, once interpreted his way, become facts in his mind,” says Louis Black, editor of the Austin Chronicle, who knows Jones, a fellow Austin resident. When I confronted Jones with my reading of the report, he became pugnacious, launching into a diatribe against psychologists as agents of social control.

Conspiracy thinking is embraced by a surprisingly large proportion of the population. Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe President John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, and 42 percent believe the government is covering up evidence of flying saucers, finds Ted Goertzel, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University at Camden. Thirty-six percent of respondents to a 2006 Scripps News/Ohio University poll at least suspected that the U.S. government played a role in 9/11.

We’re all conspiracy theorists to some degree. We’re all hardwired to find patterns in our environment, particularly those that might represent a threat to us. And when things go wrong, we find ourselves searching for what, or who, is behind it.

In his 1954 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, historian Richard Hofstadter hypothesized that conspiracy thinking is fueled by underlying feelings of alienation and helplessness. Research supports his theory. New Mexico State University psychologist Marina Abalakina-Paap has found that people who endorse conspiracy theories are especially likely to feel angry, mistrustful, alienated from society, and helpless over larger forces controlling their lives.

Jones insists he had a “Leave It to Beaverchildhood.” I couldn’t confirm such an idyllic past. When I asked if I could interview his family or childhood friends, he insisted his family was very “private” and he had not kept in touch with a single friend. When I asked if I might look them up, he became irritated. He doubted he could “still spell their names,” and besides, I’d already taken up enough of his time. “I turned down 50 or 60 requests for interviews this week,” he wanted me to know.

The number sounded wildly inflated. Conspiracy theorists have a grandiose view of themselves as heroes “manning the barricades of civilization” at an urgent “turning point” in history, Hofstadter held. Jones has a “messiah complex,” Black contends. Grandiosity is often a defense against underlying feelings of powerlessness.

Even well-grounded skeptics are prone to connect disparate dots when they feel disempowered. In a series of studies, Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern demonstrated that people primed to feel out of control are particularly likely to see patterns in random stimuli.

Might people be especially responsive to Jones’ message in today’s America, marked by economic uncertainty and concerns about terrorism and government scandals?

Readers – the end is nigh. Any day of the week there always seems to be some terminal apocalypse just around the corner, poised to finally bring ruin to us all – and severe distress to the gullible. This is true not only in relation to the 2012 Mayan prediction, but regularly throughout human history – going right back to pre-Roman times.

Why our fixation? Writing strictly on a not-for-prophet basis, here are the Top 10 reasons for our obsession…

• 10 – An inflated sense of self-importance

Much stems from our difficulty in grasping the tiny walk-on part we all have amid the sprawling enormity of deep time. The human brain just can’t compute the vastness of it. For many, the world doesn’t only revolve around us – it stops around us too. 1 in 7 people in the world right now believe it will all end during their lifetime.

• 9 – It provides a sense of meaning

The idea of an apocalypse pushes all the right buttons at a psychological level because the idea of ‘there’s no meaning’ is a little freaky. It represents the fundamental struggle between order and chaos.

Human societies have always tried to create some kind of framework of meaning to give history and our own personal lives some kind of significance.

• 8 – It’s about a basic human need: power

Apocalyptic predictions are a way for people to try to control the way their (and others’) world works.

The one thing we can never predict is the time and manner of our own deaths. What you get during times of particular discontent – war, famine or general bad times – is a rise in apocalyptic preaching and ideas. And at those times we seem to lap it up like there’s no tomorrow.

• 7 – It’s a collective death wish

Immanuel Velikovsky, writer on ancient catastrophes, had an unsettling theory that mankind blocks its memory of the failure of civilizations of the past, while simultaneously desiring those catastrophes – much like a collective death wish.

Considering war, global warming, financial collapse and other ways we might collectively destroy ourselves – this is a little worrying. But we need to distinguish between the end of our species (far more likely) and the end of the planet (highly unlikely).

• 6 – We’re all bored

Life can seem grindingly dull sometimes. Same job, groundhog day – yawn, as the hipsters say.

Wouldn’t a little injection of chaos alleviate all that crap? After all, aren’t depictions of apocalyptic events from the movies downright sexy? We’re sure we’d have Milla Jovovich or Megan Fox running around in tight leather pants saving the world. Might spice up a dull Wednesday morning, non?

Last week the world has seen yet another failed doomsday prediction, but far from this being the preserve of either the Mayans or modern day “preppers”, established religions and even esteemed scientists have also had their fair share of failed predictions. However, now we are left wondering what the next big end of world prediction will be.

Numerous, by Kelly Rogers , out now on Amazon Kindle, is a thriller written around the Papal Prophecy, by Ireland’s first ever saint, Archbishop Malachy, who correctly predicted each and every pope until the very last, as well as his own death. The 900-year-old manuscript still lies in the Vatican archives.

Modern-day readers may believe that this book has no relevance to our lives today, but think again. St Malachy’s prophecy predicts that the final pope will usher forth “The End. When the terrible judge will judge his people.” We currently see the penultimate pope, Joesph Ratzinger , in the Vatican and exactly what “The End” will be we can only guess at… But we’re sure this is going to be the next big thing in doomsday predictions!

The Modern Day Doomsdayer

Californian preacher Harold Camping took a very public climb-down in May 2011 when his end-of-the-world prediction failed to materialise, after a nationwide billboard and radio advert campaign. This was not Camping’s first failed foray into the world of divination; he inaccurately predicted the world would end on the 6th September 1994 and consequently some followers gave up homes, savings and jobs. When the end failed to occur he revised the date to September 29 and then again to October 2.

He said, “I don’t have any responsibility. I’m only teaching the Bible. I don’t have spiritual rule over anybody… except my wife.” We imagine everyone, including his long-suffering wife, will take any further predictions with a liberal pinch of salt.

2000 reasons to not believe

Many luminaries over the centuries predicted 2000 and the end of time, including: Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy; Edgar Cayce , world famous US psychic and healer; Sun Myung Moon , founder of the Unification Church; and even the esteemed and revered Sir Isaac Newton .

This also has to be the least original prophecy in history. At the turn of the first millennium many people expected Christ to return and ‘the end’ to arrive with him. Our prediction: expect more of the same for the year 3000.

The TV Evangelist turned would-be US president

Ex-Baptist minister and US TV evangelist Pat Robertson said that “God told him the end was coming”, but to avoid catastrophe we all needed to “pray real hard”. We can only assume that the world did just that as no cataclysm arrived.

Robertson’s power of prophecy has also evaded him in his own life; evidently not seeing his total defeat as a Republican presidential candidate in 1988.

False Witness

We all know how tenacious Jehovah Witnesses can be when it comes to door knocking and it seems that they’re equally as dogged when it comes to doomsday predictions. They first predicted Armageddon in 1914, when disaster failed to appear they revised their prophecy to 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994.

No Method in the Madness

Charles Wesley , one of the founders of the Methodist church, predicted the end in 1794, as did the Shakers. Despite his obvious error Charles’ brother, John, joined in and predicted that 1836 would be the year of the Great Beast and would herald the beginning of the end.

However, Charles Wesley clearly had his shaky convictions; he begged to be buried in an Anglican not Methodist grave just before his death.

The Millerites were never right

William Miller (founder of the Millerites, now the Seventh Day Adventists) predicted the end would come between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. The dates came and went with nothing occurring so the date was revised to April 18th. Again nothing happened and the date was changed to October 22, 1844. Miller continued to wait for the end until his death in 1849, which certainly was the end for him. However, the modern-day church that Miller founded continues to claim to this day that the date was correct, but as it was an event that occurred in Heaven it went entirely unnoticed by us on the Earthly plane.

The Jupiter Effect

The Jupiter Effect was written in 1974 by two astrophysicists, John Gribben and Stephen Plagemann . Predicted for 10thMarch 1982 when all nine planets would align and create a gravitational pull that would cause a “huge increase in sunspots, solar, flares, and/or earthquakes”. Gribben later claimed it never was a prophecy but a theoretical “what if?” However, people did believe that it was actually going to happen, the credentials of the theorists adding weight to the calculations. And indeed an effect was measured on Earth – a 0.04 millimetre high tide!